"Yuskejek will have to wait, I guess," I said.
Alfred looked troubled. "He was kind of insistent. I told him there might be a hitch, and he mumbled something about 'Remember what happened last time!' "
The rain continued through the afternoon. The thunder and lightning and wind let up, so that it became just a steady Adirondack downpour. Alfred said:
"You know, Willy, I think we really ought to take the boat to Gahato—"
"You are nuts," I said. "With this typhoon, your boat would fill before you got there."
"No; it's an unsinkable, with buoyancy tanks, and you can bail while I steer."
"Oh, for God's sake! If you're so determined on this silly business, why don't you take Mike?"
"He can't swim. Not that we're likely to have to, but I don't want to take the chance."
We argued a little more, in desultory fashion. Needless to say, neither of us really wanted to go out in that cataract. Alfred, though, had become obsessed with his Atlantean lamp and its attendant spirit. Perhaps the god had been evoked by our rubbing the lamp, like the jinn in the Arabian Nights.
Then Alfred grabbed my arm and pointed. "Look at that!"
I jumped as if stuck; the spooky atmosphere had begun to get to me. It was a relief to see that Alfred was pointing, not at the materialized form of Yuskejek, but at an enormous snapping turtle, plodding across the clearing in front of the house.
"There's our sacrifice!" cried Alfred. "Let's get him! Mike!"
We tore out the front door and went, slipping and sliding in the wet, down the bank to Lower Lake in pursuit of this turtle. We ringed the beast before it reached the lake. Looking almost like a small dinosaur, it dodged this way and that, showing quite a turn of speed. When we got close, it shot out its head and snapped its jaws. The glop of the snap sounded over the noise of the rain.
The turtle was snapping at Mike when Alfred caught it by the tail and hoisted it into the air. This took considerable strength, as it must have weighed at least twenty pounds. Alfred had to hold it almost at arm's length to keep from being bitten. The turtle kept darting that hooked beak in all directions, glop, glop! and flailing the air with its legs.
"Watch out!" I yelled. "That thing can castrate you if you're not careful!"
"Mike!" shouted Alfred. "Get the ax and the frog spear!"
We were all soaked. Alfred cried: "Hurry up! I can't hold this brute much longer!"
When the tools had been brought, Alfred said: "Now, Mike you get him to snap at the end of the spear and catch the barbs in his beak. Willy, stand by with the ax. When Mike hauls the head as far out of the shell as it'll go, chop it off!"
I had no desire to behead this turtle, which had never done anything to me. But I was a guest, and it was just possible that the lamp and its nightmares were kosher after all.
"Don't you have to do some ritual?" I asked.
"No; that comes later. Yuskejek explained it to me. Ah, got him!"
The turtle had snapped on the frog spear. By twisting the little trident, Mike hauled the head out of the shell. Then—
"Mother of God!" shouted Mike. "He's after biting off the shpear!"
It was true. The turtle had bitten through one of the tines of the trident—which may have been weakened by rust— and freed itself.
Instantly came a wild yell from Alfred. The turtle had fastened its beak on the flesh of his leg, just above the knee. In the excitement, Alfred had forgotten to hold the reptile out away from, his body.
As the turtle bit into his leg through his trousers, Alfred danced about, tugging at the spiny tail. Then he and the turtle let go together. Alfred folded up on the ground, clutching his wounded leg, while the turtle scuttled down the slope and disappeared into the rain-beaten waters of Lower Lake.
Mike and I got Alfred back to Camp Ten Eyck, with a big red stain spreading down the front of his soaking pants leg. When we got the pants off, however, it did not look as if a trip to the doctor in Gahato would be needed. The turtle's jaws had broken the skin in four places, but the cuts were of the sort that a little disinfectant and some Band-aids would take care of.
With all the excitement, we more or less forgot about Yuskejek and his sacrifice. Since Alfred was limping, he let Mike get dinner. Afterwards we listened to the radio a bit, read a bit, talked a bit, and went to bed.
The rain was still drumming on the roof when, some hours later, Alfred woke me. "It's that stamping noise again," he said.
As we listened, the bump—bump—bump came again, louder than before. Again we jerked open the door and sprayed the light of the flash and the lantern about. All we saw was the curtain of rain.
When we closed the door, the sound came again, louder. Again we looked out in vain. When we closed the door again, the noise came louder yet: boom—boom—boom. The whole island seemed to shake.
"Hey!" said Alfred. "What the hell's happening? It feels like an earthquake."
"Never heard of an earthquake in this country," I said. "But—"
There came a terrific boom, like a near-miss of a lightning bolt. The house shook, and I could hear things falling off shelves.
Mike risked a quick look out and wailed: "Mr. Ten Eyck! The lake's coming up!"
The shaking had become so violent that we could hardly stand. We clutched at the house and at each other to keep our balance. It was like standing in a train going fast on a bad old roadbed. Alfred looked out.
"It is!" he shrieked. "Let's get the hell out of here!"
Out we rushed into the merciless rain, just as the water of Lower Lake came foaming up to the porch of Camp Ten Eyck. Actually, it was not the lake that was rising but the island that was sinking. I stumbled off the porch to find myself knee-deep in water. A wave knocked me over, but I somehow shed my bathrobe.
I am, luckily, a fairly good swimmer. Once I was afloat, I had no trouble in keeping on the surface. There were no small waves of the kind that slap you in the face, but big, long, slow surges, which bobbed me up and down.
There was, however, a vast amount of debris, which had floated off the island when it submerged. I kept bumping into crates, shingles, sticks of firewood, tree branches, and other truck. I heard Mike Devlin calling. "Where are you, Mike?" I yelled.
By shouting back and forth, we found each other, and I swam to him. Remembering that Mike could not swim, I wished that I had had more lifesaving practice. Fortunately, I found Mike clutching a log—part of that poplar they had been sawing up—for a life preserver. With some pushing on my part, we got to shore half an hour later. Mike was sobbing.
"Poor Mr. Ten Eyck!" he said. "Such a nice, kind gentleman, too. There must have been a curse on him."
Whether or not there was a curse on Alfred Ten Eyck, his corpse was recovered the next day. He was, as he had admitted, a loser.
The surges had done many thousands of dollars' damage to other people's docks, boats, and boathouses on Upper and Lower Lakes and the Channel. Because of the downpour, however, all the other camp owners had stayed in and so had not been hurt.
The State geologist said the earthquake was a geological impossibility. "I should have said, an anomaly," he corrected himself. "It was obviously possible, since it happened. We shall have to modify our theories to account for it."
I did not think it would do any good to tell him about Yuskejek. Besides, if the story got around, some camp owner might be screwy enough to sue me for damages to his boathouse. He would have a hell of a time proving anything; but who wants even the silliest lawsuit?
The Atlantean lamp is, I suppose, at the bottom of the lake, and I hope that nobody dredges it up. When Yuskejek threatens to sink an island if disappointed of his sacrifice, he is not fooling. Perhaps he can no longer sink a place so large as Atlantis. A little islet like Ten Eyck is more his present-day speed.