I MET LOUIS WAGNER (continued)

"Louis! Louis! LOUIS!"

Upon realizing that he was recognized, he switched back into the kitchen and seizing an axe with which they had been chopping ice from the well that day, he ran back to the terror stricken girl and cleaved her skull in two with all of his massive moronic strength wielding the axe.

Maren saw all this from the window and she tried to rouse Karen, who was by this time fully unconscious from fear and the blow she had received. Finding this to be impossible Maren took a blanket about her shoulders and hugging to her bosom the dog who was crouching beside her, she climbed out the bedroom window and stumbled half blindly through the snow to hide among the crevices of the stones in a cove near the edge of the island. As she was settling down to hide, she could hear the pitiful cries of Karen who was being carefully and artfully disposed of by the blood-thirsty German.

Wagner tracked about the house, looking this way and that for the missing girl. Being unable to find her, he returned to the cottage and, in the presence of the two bleeding bodies, he calmly brewed a cup of tea and ate some lunch that he had brought with him. After satisfying his appetite, childlike, he ransacked the rooms for the money and found less than twenty dollars to pay him for his trouble. Pocketing this with a grunt of dissatisfaction he coolly returned to his dory and rowed back to Portsmouth during the blackness of the early morning.

Maren, still hugging the dog close to her, waited until the sun was up before she tried to secure help. Upon hearing the pounding of the hammers of the workmen who were rebuilding the "Oceanic" after the great fire, she rushed to the edge of the island toward them and frantically called for help, while waving her blanket at them to attract their attention, but they went on with their work and did not heed her. So she dragged her half-frozen bare feet again over the cold snow to the edge of Malaga, another island nearby, and managed to attract the attention of the children there. Old Mr. Ingerbredsen came across in his boat and, upon seeing the nature of the tragedy, he called for men from the other islands to bring their guns and they hunted for the maniac, but in vain. At about ten o'clock the "Clara Bella" returned with John Hontvet, Ivan and Matthew, they were stunned by the gruesome sight of their loved ones and were so overcome that two of them swooned, with grief.

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