A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 58: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

58 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY frightful path. At any moment, another great explosion might fill the interior of ms pit with thunders and with liquid res. I wondered about the wisdom of the “wise men” who lived next door to a volcano! Then I heard a voice say close to my ear—for there was a continual deep roar- ing and growling from the liquid mass beneath me, “Brother, all that is strange seems terrible. Come forward after me, and thou wilt find the path an easy one!” As she said this, Sylvia walked straight past me into the fire-lit gloom of that hell ! Shame and pity and admiration—all worked to dissolve my fear for a mo- ment, and I ran forward after her. I reached her and touched her arm. “Go back! Go back, Sylvia!” I shouted in her ear. She said, calmly, “All is as the goddess wills it. And she wills that I go forward with you to the limits of my domain.” With that, she turned and went straight forward, again, and I followed her not because I wanted to go, but simply be- cause I could not be outfaced by the courage of a mere girl like her! She con- tinued on. And the heat increased around us. I never have felt such a terrible blast of it, burning and biting. She flung a fold of her cloak about her head, and I tore off my coat and used it similarly as a shield against the heat. But no shield could help very much. To make things worse, one moment we were stumbling over heaps of cinders, and the next, the narrow ridge almost pinched out, and we were walking on a ledge hard- ly half a yard in width. I had to look down to make sure of my footing, and when I looked down, I saw the frightful vitals of the mountain writh- ing and throwing up crimson arms to me. I hate to think of that moment; I hate still worse to think of the instant when, just as the path widened, I stumbled on a rolling, loose bit of rock, and fell flat, spin- ning over and over, until I was on the edge of the abyss. I was on the edge, and I was falling— and then I felt the grip of the girl on me. She had thrown herself on her knees, and now I lay on the brink of the precipice with a thousand feet of nameless horror beneath me, and saw her holding her grip, though the momentum of my fall was toppling her forward. Yes, she had committed herself utterly to the will of the goddess, that much was clear, and in another instant we both would have hurtled down into that red inferno. But by ounces the scale turned in our favor, and I felt the strain relieved as I recovered a knee grip of the rim of the ledge, and then found a hand hold, and scrambled back to safety. What followed, I hate to think about. It makes me bow my head and shudder. But I'll tell the truth. I got back to safety on my hands and knees, and I caught hold of the priestess and hid my frightend face in her cloak like a panic-stricken child! Yes, and she put her hand on my head and leaned over and spoke comfort in my ear, and gave me her strong, slender hand, and helped me back to my cowardly feet! So, hardly knowing what I did or where I was going, because fear had taken the strength out of my knees and the wits out of my head, with my shaking hand upon her shoulder, I went along that frightful cliff with her, and turned the corner of the bayss, and saw straight ahead, perhaps a hundred yards away, a great, columned portal just as the priestess had said that I should. It looked to me like the entrance into hell! CHAPTER 17 The White Fire ELL, I was finally steadied on my feet by some sense of shame and the hand and voice of the girl. And it seemed to me that I scarcely cared what happened then; I would be willing to jump straight into the arms of death, if necessary, to keep from showing my lack of nerve again, When I stood up I found that things were worse than ever. In the great pit below, I heard a series of muffled ex- plosions, and with each of these explosions there was an upward leaping of a peculiar, greenish light; followed by the showering and splashing sound “as of water falling GOMIIGooOO S C@ iin