A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

38 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY cliffs would have been better, for the bay, like a savage, enormous mouth, was fitted with teeth matched to its size. Broken, jutting rocks received the rush of the waves, and the waters were turned to spray and spume that flung hundreds of feet upward, I swear, and then blew as level rain out of sight across the unknown land. The longer sway of the open sea gave way to a sickening and irregular pitch, like the leaping of a bucking horse. We rose and fell, rose and fell. And now all was blotted out by the denseness of a passing squall; and when I - looked again, the cliffs were changed and brought nearer and made more terrible by their white sheath of snow. My heart was sinking, before. But now it lay like a stone in the bottom of the pit. I was too frightened to feel fear. I was too overwhelmed by the awesomeness of the sight, and by the majesty of the sound, though I knew that the next moment I would be plunged to certain death on the rocks. And they seemed to me to move, the waves standing still, and the unspeakable granite jaws closing upon the verge of the sea and blowing it forth again like a white smoke. We came down with a rush on a jutting point—and then swerving with an un- expected current a little to the side, I saw before me a dim and glimmering hope, for the rocks parted and what seemed a safe cove was revealed. I say what seemed a safe cove, for I had only the merest glimpse of it through the thundering and the dashing of that mo- ment, and then a great wave, a master wave of them all, picked up us—me and the sled and the great dog Murder, and the little ice island under us—and whirled us in the air as a child spins a top, and flung us forward like a stone. I think the mere flight through the air was what knocked me out of . . . time! For I remember that my wild impres- sion was of being a youngster again and standing in a great shop, piléd with crock- ery, and with ae beautiful glass vases all around, and the whole mass crashing with a sort of music about my ears. Then I woke up, frozen, being choked by hands that worked on my throat. T WAS Murder, who had me by the nape of the neck and was tugging back with all of his might, pulling me out of the freezing wash of the water along the shore. I got up, as well as I could. 1 thought that my right hip was broken, where the revolver had jammed against it, but then I found that I could walk. Still, I had no-real consciousness of safety. No more safe than a man who has landed on the very shores of the region of death, so leaden-dark, and so filled with thunder was all of this land before me. But then I saw a little distance ahead of me, my sled, lying unbroken, neither on its side nor on its back, but right side up, as though waiting to be used, and that sight, oddly enough, restored my courage and my wits in a single stroke. What was in the sled was secure enough, having been lashed to the thwarts. I got out the harness, and with my stiff hands managed to fasten Murder in place. Then I made a weaving way among the rocks and up the slope and over the up- standing rim of cliffs which received the blast of the south wind. Once over the hill, the yell of the storm grew less, and that was a help. A vast noise is to the brain like a blanket which stifles the mouth. It was an unbelievable -relief when I found myself under shelter from the wind and from the racket. And then I found a small stream of water run- ning down the hillside, issuing from the dark mouth of a cave. It did not strike me as strange, at first, when I saw water running. But when I realized that the comparative trickle should have been frozen solidly across, long ago, I went to it staggered with amazement, As I went nearer, I saw that it was just the darkness of the cave that clouded the sheen of the stream; there was actually a vapor rising thickly from its surface. The water was hot—so hot that I could hardly touch it! It had been eight months since I had known anything warmer than the blood of a newly killed Seal, or the horribly smok- ing flame of my primus stove, over which I cooked. And now here was heat actually flowing over the frozen ground of the Arctic! “comicbooks. com”