A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

THE SMOKING LAND © 61 In the meantime, I found myself in a great hall, very much like that which had led to the entrance to the crater on the farther side of it. There were a score of men here all in vast turmoil. They were pointing at me, and they were jabbering about the priestess. Now, then, as Sylvia recovered her senses and stood up from the chair into which she had fallen, a pair of big guards in steel cuirasses caught her, one by each arm, and hurried her off toward the door. They were ejecting her. She had to go back by the way she had come, and she had to go at once! When I thought of that inferno outside the wall, and the fire that was showering upon the ledge over which we had walked, I turned sick. I ran and got in front of the men and the girl. She was stepping along as calmly as you please, and her head was high, and her look was perfectly steady. I could not even see that her face was very pale, I held up my hand and stopped them. “Do you realize,” [I shouted at them, “what it would be? Murder! I tell you, it would be murder! No goddess, nothing else that you believe in could keep her alive for one minute out there!” “Answer him, lady,” said one of the guards, And she said to me, ‘Do you doubt her power, when she has laid her own finger on your forehead and marked you for her own? How else could you have walked through the fire, except by her permis-. sion? And if | am worthy, I shall return unharmed even through the heart of the flame !” As she finished this magnificent balder- dash, the two guards nodded in solemn agreement. “Let the door be opened!” one of them said. “Pull the levers, Ralph!’ “You infernal murderers!” I shouted, and grabbed my saber out of its scabbard. I wanted to carve their heads to the chin, and I was too dizzy to realize the number of hands that were against me. Two or three caught me from behind and jammed me back against the wall with enough force to knock half the wind out of my lungs. At the same time the door to the crater slid open. It was like opening the door to a fur- nace. The heat that thrust into the room struck through my clothes as though they had been tisstie paper, and seared my skin. I could hardly see the serene face of that gitl as she walked forward was a dreamed vision. The frightful blast had literally knocked her escort back on his heels, but Sylvia went straight forward, with a smile, and her head held high, into the crematory. One instant more, and there would be nothing left of her but an ash flinging about and dissolving in that accursed Fountain of Life, as they chose to call it. But then a voice shouted loudly, in command, and instantly the door slid across the gap and closed the white fire away from my aching eyes. I tried to shout, but all that came from my throat was a babbling groan. My body went limp, and I felt the sagging of my weight as the two guards held me up. Then, like ‘a womanish fool, I fainted. I CAME to looking up at an arched ceiling, coffered and carved in the most elaborate fashion, with three Gothic liernes FIRST AID FOR THE COMING YEAR =» If upset stomachs, cold distress Or headaches mar your year, For fast First Aid the twelve months thru Keep Alka-Seltzer near. Use it also for FAST RELIEF of _ Muscular Aches and Pains Alka- = All drugstores comicbooks