A‑æa crouched close to the cave mouth, watching Ga‑nor with wondering eyes. Ga‑nor’s occupation interested her, as well as Ga‑nor himself. As for Ga‑nor, he was too occupied with his work to notice he...

The sun had set. The great shadows came striding over the forest. In the weird twilight of a late summer day, I saw the path ahead glide on among the mighty trees and disappear. And I shuddered and gl...

Fear? Your pardon, Messieurs, but the meaning of fear you do not know. No, I hold to my statement. You are soldiers, adventurers. You have known the charges of regiments of dragoons, the frenzy of win...

City streets. A crowd of students standing on a corner. It is raining. Bertie: Believe me, this is the last time I’ll ever come to this town. Tommy: Applesauce. That’s what you said last year. Wasn’t ...

City streets. A crowd of students standing on a corner. It is raining. Bertie: Believe me, this is the last time I’ll ever come to this town. Tommy: Applesauce. That’s what you said last year. Wasn’t ...

City streets. A crowd of students standing on a corner. It is raining. Bertie: Believe me, this is the last time I’ll ever come to this town. Tommy: Applesauce. That’s what you said last year. Wasn’t ...

The train. Tommy is arguing with the conductor. Tommy: But I tell you, I had it. I came over with the crowd from our college to watch the team play Jalor Mares at the Hay Palace. I had my ticket and⁠ ...

The next night. Bertie seated in his room, before a warm fire. He appears very comfortable and satisfied. Enter Tommy. His clothes are muddy and wrinkled, and his toes are showing through his worn sho...

A special train, a chair car, occupied by students. An upperclassman is attempting to sleep. Upperclassman: Things have quieted down and I’ll get a chance for a nap. He dozes. A classmate: Hey, wake u...

A special train, a chair car, occupied by students. An upperclassman is attempting to sleep. Upperclassman: Things have quieted down and I’ll get a chance for a nap. He dozes. A classmate: Hey, wake u...

Upperclassman is snoring contentedly. Upperclassman: Who⁠—what⁠—hey, what time is it? The Porter: One-thirty, suh. Upperclassman: Fine. Everybody’s asleep now. Now for a good nap. He dozes. Upperclass...

A few minutes later. A flock of girls come through. Girls: Supposedly singing. I gotta gal, her name is Lulu! I love Lulu, I love Lulu, darling! Upperclassman: Jumps seven feet out of seat. Ye gods, w...

Upperclassman sleeping. Girls return. Girls: Still singing. Seven hundredth verse, same as the fist, I love Lulu, I love Lulu, darling! Upperclassman: Upperclassman develops deep and enduring hatred f...

Miss Zara Goldstein, By the ghetto, East Side New York yet. Zara mein gold; I having been by college now some weeks yet I thought I would write to find out if you still love me and when is tat loafer ...

Cororuc glanced about him and hastened his pace. He was no coward, but he did not like the place. Tall trees rose all about, their sullen branches shutting out the sunlight. The dim trail led in and o...

The night was strangely still. As we sat upon the wide veranda, gazing out over the broad, shadowy lawns, the silence of the hour entered our spirits and for a long while no one spoke. Then far across...

From the time when I first saw Senecoza, the fetish-man, I distrusted him, and from vague distrust the idea eventually grew into hatred. I was but newly come to the East Coast, new to African ways, so...

They were the brawlers and braggarts, the loud boasters and hard drinkers, of Faring town, John Kulrek and his crony Lie-lip Canool. Many a time have I, a tousled-haired lad, stolen to the tavern door...

The moonlight shimmered hazily, making silvery mists of illusion among the shadowy trees. A faint breeze whispered down the valley, bearing a shadow that was not of the moon-mist. A faint scent of smo...

The moonlight shimmered hazily, making silvery mists of illusion among the shadowy trees. A faint breeze whispered down the valley, bearing a shadow that was not of the moon-mist. A faint scent of smo...

“You are a fool!” The words came in a cold snarl that curdled the hearer’s blood. He who had just been named a fool lowered his eyes sullenly without answer. “You and all the others I lead!” The speak...

Across the dusky waters the whisper came: boom, boom, boom!⁠—a sullen reiteration. Far away and more faintly sounded a whisper of different timbre: thrum, throom, thrum! Back and forth went the vibrat...

Thrum, thrum, thrum! Somewhere, with deadening monotony, a cadence was repeated, over and over, bearing out the same theme: “Fool⁠—fool⁠—fool!” Now it was far away, now he could stretch out his hand a...

Limbs and vines slapped against Kane’s face. The oppressive steam of the tropic night rose like mist about him. The moon, now floating high above the jungle, limned the black shadows in its white glow...

There are two roads to Torkertown. One, the shorter and more direct route, leads across a barren upland moor, and the other, which is much longer, winds its tortuous way in and out among the hummocks ...

There are two roads to Torkertown. One, the shorter and more direct route, leads across a barren upland moor, and the other, which is much longer, winds its tortuous way in and out among the hummocks ...

The hut of old Ezra the miser stood by the road in the midst of the swamp, half screened by the sullen trees which grew about it. The walls were rotting, the roof crumbling, and great, pallid and gree...

“Landlord, ho!” The shout broke the lowering silence and reverberated through the black forest with sinister echoing. “This place hath a forbidding aspect, meseemeth.” Two men stood in front of the fo...

The blare of the trumpets grew louder, like a deep golden tide surge, like the soft booming of the evening tides against the silver beaches of Valusia. The throng shouted, women flung roses from the r...

The blare of the trumpets grew louder, like a deep golden tide surge, like the soft booming of the evening tides against the silver beaches of Valusia. The throng shouted, women flung roses from the r...

The moon had not risen, and the garden was lighted with torches aglow in silver cressets when Kull sat down in the throne before the table of Ka-nu, ambassador of the western isles. At his right hand ...

The moon had not risen when Kull, hand to hilt, stepped to a window. The windows opened upon the great inner gardens of the royal palace, and the breezes of the night, bearing the scents of spice tree...

Kull sat upon his throne and gazed broodingly out upon the sea of faces turned toward him. A courtier was speaking in evenly modulated tones, but the king scarcely heard him. Close by, Tu, chief counc...

There comes, even to kings, the time of great weariness. Then the gold of the throne is brass, the silk of the palace becomes drab. The gems in the diadem and upon the fingers of the women sparkle dre...

The horror first took concrete form amid that most unconcrete of all things⁠—a hashish dream. I was off on a timeless, spaceless journey through the strange lands that belong to this state of being, a...

The horror first took concrete form amid that most unconcrete of all things⁠—a hashish dream. I was off on a timeless, spaceless journey through the strange lands that belong to this state of being, a...

My dream of the skull-face was borne over that usually uncrossable gap that lies between hashish enchantment and humdrum reality. I sat cross-legged on a mat in Yun Shatu’s Temple of Dreams and gather...

A hand shook me roughly as I emerged languidly from my latest debauch. “The Master wishes you! Up, swine!” Hassim it was who shook me and who spoke. “To hell with the Master!” I answered, for I hated ...

I sat on Yun Shatu’s cushions and pondered with a clearness of mind new and strange to me. As for that, all my sensations were new and strange. I felt as if I had wakened from a monstrously long sleep...

At the expiration of two days, Hassim beckoned me as I stood in the opium room. I advanced with a springy, resilient tread, secure in the confidence that I had culled the Morley papers of all their wo...

Outside my room sounded a light footstep. The doorknob turned cautiously and slowly; the door opened. I sprang erect with a gasp. Red lips, half parted, dark eyes like limpid seas of wonder, a mass of...

A while after my beautiful and mysterious visitor had left, I sat in meditation. I believed that I had at last stumbled on to an explanation of a part of the enigma, at any rate. This was the conclusi...

The terrible spectacle drove for the instant all thoughts of rebellion from my mind. My very blood froze in my veins and I stood motionless. I heard Hassim laugh grimly behind me. The eyes in the cada...

The Skull-faced One stood watching me critically as I sat panting on a couch, completely exhausted. He held in his hand the goblet and surveyed the golden stem, which was crushed out of all shape. Thi...

I followed Yussef Ali along the winding hallways, down the steps⁠—Kathulos was not in the idol-room⁠—and along the tunnel, then through the rooms of the Temple of Dreams and out into the street, where...

The door closed softly behind me, the great dark house looming up more starkly than ever. Stooping, I crossed the wet lawn at a run, a grotesque and unholy figure, I doubt not, since any man had at a ...

Two of the China boys squatted among the smudge fires, staring at me unwinkingly as I threaded my way among the recumbent bodies and made my way to the rear door. For the first time I traversed the co...

The cold gray dawn was stealing over the river as we stood in the deserted bar of the Temple of Dreams. Gordon was questioning the two men who had remained on guard outside the building while their un...

Gordon struck a match and absently allowed it to flicker and go out in his hand. His Turkish cigarette hung unlighted between his fingers. “This is the most logical conclusion to be reached,” he was s...

I sat alone in John Gordon’s apartments and laughed mirthlessly. In spite of the elixir’s stimulus, the strain of the previous night, with its loss of sleep and its heartrending actions, was telling o...

“A shop open this late,” Gordon remarked suddenly. A fog had descended on London and along the quiet street we were traversing the lights glimmered with the peculiar reddish haze characteristic of suc...

Gordon puffed savagely at his Turkish cigarette, staring abstractedly and unseeingly at Hansen, who sat opposite him. “I suppose we must chalk up another failure against ourselves. That Levantine, Kam...

Hansen snored on the bed as I paced the room. Another day had passed over London and again the street lamps glimmered through the fog. Their lights affected me strangely. They seemed to beat, solid wa...

Like a lean wolf I glided up the stairs. Some twenty feet up there was a sort of landing from which other corridors diverged, much like the lower one by which I had come. The thought came to me that t...

Slowly I drifted back into life⁠—slowly, slowly. A mist held me and in the mist I saw a Skull⁠— I lay in a steel cage like a captive wolf, and the bars were too strong, I saw, even for my strength. Th...

There is little need to linger on the scenes of horror of that terrible London morning. The world is familiar with and knows most of the details attendant to the great explosion which wiped out a tent...

Old Adam Farrel lay dead in the house wherein he had lived alone for the last twenty years. A silent, churlish recluse, in his life he had known no friends, and only two men had watched his passing. D...

A great black shadow lay across the land, cleaving the red flame of the sunset. To the man who toiled up the jungle trail it loomed like a symbol of death and horror, a menace brooding and terrible, l...

A great black shadow lay across the land, cleaving the red flame of the sunset. To the man who toiled up the jungle trail it loomed like a symbol of death and horror, a menace brooding and terrible, l...

As Kane fell he followed his fighting instinct, twisting in midair so that when he struck, were it ten or a thousand feet below, he would land on top of the man who fell with him. The end came suddenl...

A couch stood in the middle of the room and on its silken surface lay a woman⁠—a woman whose skin was white and whose reddish gold hair fell about her bare shoulders. She now sprang erect, fright floo...

Slowly Kane drifted back from the dim realms where the unseen assailant’s bludgeon had hurled him. Something hindered the motion of his hands and there was a metallic clanking when he sought to raise ...

Kane slammed the hidden door shut behind him, jammed down the spring and for a moment leaned against it, every muscle tensed, expecting to hold it against the efforts of a horde of spearmen. But nothi...

Kane wiped the cold sweat from his pale brow as he hurried down the shadowy passage. Outside this horrible palace it must be night. Even now the full moon⁠—the grim Moon of Skulls⁠—might be rising abo...

Dawn lay like a cool white hand on the brow of Solomon Kane. The nightmares faded from his soul as he breathed deep of the morning wind which blew up from the jungle far below his feet⁠—a wind laden w...

The twigs which N’Longa flung on the fire broke and crackled. The upleaping flames lighted the countenances of the two men. N’Longa, voodoo man of the Slave Coast, was very old. His wizened and gnarle...

The twigs which N’Longa flung on the fire broke and crackled. The upleaping flames lighted the countenances of the two men. N’Longa, voodoo man of the Slave Coast, was very old. His wizened and gnarle...

Solomon Kane shifted his musket from his shoulder and let the stock fall to the earth. Silence lay about him like a fog. Kane’s lined face and tattered garments showed the effect of long bush travel. ...

“Great God!” whispered Kane; “these men were dead! Vampires! This is Satan’s handiwork manifested.” Zunna crawled to his knees and clung there. “These be walking dead men, master,” she whimpered. “I s...

“Now we find this stone city,” said N’Longa. “Yes? Why not send your ghost out to kill these vampires?” Kane asked idly. “Ghost got to have one fellow body to work in,” N’Longa answered. “Sleep now. T...

Kane sat in the mouth of the cave where Zunna lay, submitting to the fetish-man’s bandaging. The Puritan’s garments hung in tatters about his frame; his limbs and breast were deeply gashed and darkly ...

Maskat, like many another port, is a haven for the drifters of many nations who bring their tribal customs and peculiarities with them. Turk tubs shoulders with Greek and Arab squabbles with Hindu. Th...

The dagger flashed downward. A sharp cry broke in a gasp. The form on the rough altar twitched convulsively and lay still. The jagged flint edge sawed at the crimsoned breast, and thin bony fingers, g...

The dagger flashed downward. A sharp cry broke in a gasp. The form on the rough altar twitched convulsively and lay still. The jagged flint edge sawed at the crimsoned breast, and thin bony fingers, g...

The army fell silent as Bran, Cormac and Gonar went toward the stranger who approached in long swinging strides. As they neared him the illusion of monstrous size vanished, but they saw he was a man o...

The sun slanted westward. Silence lay like an invisible mist over the valley. Cormac gathered the reins in his hand and glanced up at the ridges on both sides. The waving heather which grew rank on th...

The clangor of the swords had died away, the shouting of the slaughter was hushed; silence lay on the red-stained snow. The pale bleak sun that glittered so blindingly from the ice-fields and the snow...

As I entered John Kirowan’s study I was too much engrossed in my own thoughts to notice, at first, the haggard appearance of his visitor, a big, handsome young fellow well known to me. “Hello, Kirowan...

The silence of the pine woods lay like a brooding cloak about the soul of Bristol McGrath. The black shadows seemed fixed, immovable as the weight of superstition that overhung this forgotten back-cou...

The silence of the pine woods lay like a brooding cloak about the soul of Bristol McGrath. The black shadows seemed fixed, immovable as the weight of superstition that overhung this forgotten back-cou...

He was looking into a great dusty chamber which might have served as a ballroom in antebellum days; its lofty ceiling was hung with cobwebs, its rich oak panels showed dark and stained. But there was ...

A man stood in the doorway that opened upon the great outer hall⁠—a tall man in a strange alien garb. He wore a turban and a silk coat belted with a gay-hued girdle. Turkish slippers were on his feet....

In the brooding silence of the cavern Bristol McGrath lay staring blankly upward, his soul a seething hell. Fool, fool, to be taken in so easily! Yet, how could he have known? He had never seen De Alb...

In the darkness of the woodland path McGrath stirred at last, and staggered groggily to his feet. That desperate blow might have crushed the skull of a man whose physique and vitality were not that of...

“Trouble on Tularoosa Creek!” A warning to send cold fear along the spine of any man who was raised in that isolated back-country, called Canaan, that lies between Tularoosa and Black River⁠—to send h...

“Trouble on Tularoosa Creek!” A warning to send cold fear along the spine of any man who was raised in that isolated back-country, called Canaan, that lies between Tularoosa and Black River⁠—to send h...

The curious glow that had first showed me the quadroon girl had vanished. In my confusion I had forgotten it. But I did not waste time on vain conjecture as to its source, as I groped my way back to t...

It was not yet noon when I rode out of the village westward along the old road. Thick woods swallowed me quickly. Dense walls of pines marched with me on either hand, giving way occasionally to fields...

Night fell and the moon shone through the trees, bloodred behind the black branches. The horses were growing hard to manage. “They got more sense’n us, Kirby,” muttered Braxton. “Panther, maybe,” I re...

Egyptian darkness! The phrase is too vivid for complete comfort, suggesting not only blackness, but unseen things lurking in that blackness; things that skulk in the deep shadows and shun the light of...

Egyptian darkness! The phrase is too vivid for complete comfort, suggesting not only blackness, but unseen things lurking in that blackness; things that skulk in the deep shadows and shun the light of...

Jim Tike was dead, lying face down in a pool of his own blood, his red-dabbled limbs sprawling drunkenly. I stared uneasily at the surrounding forest that hid the thing that had killed him. That it wa...

A flickering light was the first thing that impressed itself upon my awakening faculties. I blinked, shook my head, came suddenly fully awake. I was lying on my back in a small glade, walled by toweri...

Crouching in the shadows, I circled the little clearing to reach a side of the cabin which was without a window. In the thick darkness, with no gleam of light to reveal me, I glided out from the trees...

Yar Ali squinted carefully down the blue barrel of his Lee-Enfield, called devoutly on Allah and sent a bullet through the brain of a flying rider. “Allahu akbar!” The big Afghan shouted in glee, wavi...

The thunder of my old-fashioned doorknocker, reverberating eerily through the house, roused me from a restless and nightmare-haunted sleep. I looked out the window. In the last light of the sinking mo...