World of the Living Dead
Author of "The Second Missile," etc.
OBVIOUSLY, there seems no reason to suppose that there might not be some form of life—even intelligent life—beneath the surface of the earth. Several theories have been propounded on this subject by those who made some serious, interested study. Until anything definite is proved, one theory is as good as another. It seems to us just a question which is the more exciting—and plausible. Earl Rapp's ideas on this subject are convincing—and make a very good story.
Illustrated by MOREY
CHAPTER I
IT was evening when the hurricane struck. Lashing the West Indies seas into a mad fury, it came suddenly out of the south, hurling itself upon the big power yacht, Scienta, like a miasmic demon. Wind howled through her taut rigging in the appalling tones of a tormented soul.
To Dr. John Marsden, scientist, explorer and owner of the big craft, supporting himself in the pilot house with a leg and an arm wrapped around a stanchion, it sounded as if the devil himself had suddenly popped up out of hell to strum a song of doom on the yacht's dripping halliards and shrouds.
On the Scienta's heels, reaching out for her with murderous intent, a waterspout sped with a droning hum that was fast increasing to a steady, hollow roar. In a frenzied effort to avoid having the craft smashed to kindling under his feet, Captain Norton, at the wheel, signaled the engine room for full speed ahead.
The Scienta drove herself into the rushing seas until her figurehead bit deep in foam. She climbed a giant, simmering green comber and swept dizzily into a boiling trough.
The awnings, stretched tight over her decks, suddenly burst with the roar of a bomb to fly ahead in long ribbons of white gossamer. The waterspout tore along in the wake of the careening craft, churned brine at the base of its ominous column, gray and roaring with bitter menace.
Again and again the Scienta, in her mad effort to escape the spout, buried her figurehead under the boiling seas. Rushes of seething brine swept waist-deep over her main deck. She shook herself gamely life a half-drowned dog and almost stood upright on her fan-tail as she raced up the side of a green mountain.
Then the roaring spout overtook her. It struck her a mighty, but glancing blow across the stern. The wheel suddenly spun from the captain's hands. The yacht shuddered and groaned. Her plates creaked threateningly. Her decks went awash clear to the top of the rail. The spout broke and thundered past into a raving sea, leaving the battered craft floundering in white foam.
Somehow the Scienta shook herself free of the smothering embrace of the sea. It seemed as if eternities had passed before she rose clear and her main deck once more became visible from the pilot house through the driving rain.
Dr. Marsden clung desperately to the stanchion, his sun-dyed face the color of aged alabaster. A look of fear sprang suddenly into his gray eyes, when Captain
735
