The Slayer of Souls | Page 2

already
known. People were kind; and they were also considerate enough to
subdue their sympathetic curiosity when they discovered that this
young American girl shrank from any mention of what had happened to
her during the last four years of the Great World War.
It was evident, also, that she preferred to remain aloof; and this
inclination, when finally understood, was respected by her fellow
passengers. The clever, efficient and polite Japanese officers and crew
of the Nan-yang Maru were invariably considerate and courteous to her,
and they remained nicely reticent, although they also knew the main
outline of her story and very much desired to know more. And so,
surrounded now by the friendly security of civilised humanity, Tressa
Norne, reborn to light out of hell's own shadows, awoke from four
years of nightmare which, after all, perhaps, never had seemed entirely
actual.
And now God's real sun warmed her by day; His real moon bathed her
in creamy coolness by night; sky and wind and wave thrilled her with
their blessed assurance that this was once more the real world which
stretched illimitably on every side from horizon to horizon; and the fair

faces and pleasant voices of her own countrymen made the past seem
only a ghastly dream that never again could enmesh her soul with its
web or sorcery.
And now the days at sea fled very swiftly; and when at last the Golden
Gate was not far away she had finally managed to persuade herself that
nothing really can harm the human soul; that the monstrous devil-years
were ended, never again to return; that in this vast, clean Western
Continent there could be no occult threat to dread, no gigantic menace
to destroy her body, no secret power that could consign her soul to the
dreadful abysm of spiritual annihilation.
Very early that morning she came on deck. The November day was
delightfully warm, the air clear save for a belt of mist low on the water
to the southward.
She had been told that land would not be sighted for twenty-four hours,
but she went forward and stood beside the starboard rail, searching the
horizon with the enchanted eyes of hope.
As she stood there a Japanese ship's officer crossing the deck, forward,
halted abruptly and stood staring at something to the southward.
At the same moment, above the belt of mist on the water, and perfectly
clear against the blue sky above, the girl saw a fountain of gold fire rise
from the fog, drift upward in the daylight, slowly assume the
incandescent outline of a serpentine creature which leisurely uncoiled
and hung there floating, its lizard-tail undulating, its feet with their five
stumpy claws closing, relaxing, like those of a living reptile. For a full
minute this amazing shape of fire floated there in the sky, brilliant in
the morning light, then the reptilian form faded, died out, and the last
spark vanished in the sunshine.
When the Japanese officer at last turned to resume his promenade, he
noticed a white-faced girl gripping a stanchion behind him as though
she were on the point of swooning. He crossed the deck quickly. Tressa
Norne's eyes opened.

"Are you ill, Miss Norne?" he asked.
"The--the Dragon," she whispered.
The officer laughed. "Why, that was nothing but Chinese
day-fireworks," he explained. "The crew of some fishing boat yonder in
the fog is amusing itself." He looked at her narrowly, then with a nice
little bow and smile he offered his arm: "If you are indisposed, perhaps
you might wish to go below to your stateroom, Miss Norne?"
She thanked him, managed to pull herself together and force a ghost of
a smile.
He lingered a moment, said something cheerful about being nearly
home, then made her a punctilious salute and went his way.
Tressa Norne leaned back against the stanchion and closed her eyes.
Her pallor became deathly. She bent over and laid her white face in her
folded arms.
After a while she lifted her head, and, turning very slowly, stared at the
fog-belt out of frightened eyes.
And saw, rising out of the fog, a pearl-tinted sphere which gradually
mounted into the clear daylight above like the full moon's phantom in
the sky.
Higher, higher rose the spectral moon until at last it swam in the very
zenith. Then it slowly evaporated in the blue vault above.
A great wave of despair swept her; she clung to the stanchion, staring
with half-blinded eyes at the flat fog-bank in the south.
But no more "Chinese day-fireworks" rose out of it. And at length she
summoned sufficient strength to go below to her cabin and lie there,
half senseless, huddled on her bed.
When land was sighted, the following morning, Tressa Norne had lived
a century in