Adventure Magazine Cover — page 105: what you’re looking at

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

Lights of Peace “Slowly the light spread to the zenith. And as it crept upward, there came from the lips of Atoonyak a weird ‘chirring’ sound that rose and then died away. It began again; mournfully low and vibrant; rising and failing, and this time the body. of the old priest began to sway from side to side. Squat and ugly though Atoonyak - was, there was a rhythmic grace in his move- ments. All the while his arms stretched northward as if in supplication. “Now his feet moved. A step forward, one rearward, and he sank to his knee again. Then he was up, his palms outward, as if deems back something. Back and forth e weaved; now entreating, now repelling, while from his pursed lips came the savage, eery croon. “And the lights, man! Foolish as it sounds, I tell you they seemed to follow his every motion. He beseeched and a golden streamer ten thousand miles lon shot athwart the zenith; he thrust out we palms and the streamers dissolved into nothingness, only to reappear elsewhere the next second. It was uncanny, I tell you. “Presently a castanet-like clicking be- side me distracted my attention. I found the native interpreter, teeth chattering, and in pop-eyed terror. I led him around a corner of the wireless house. “*You savvy him?’ I demanded. The native nodded vigorously, and bit by bit I got from his badly hashed jargon that Atoonyak was a sort of polar sun-wor- shiper, only, instead of deifying the orb *of day, he prayed to aurora borealis. He was of a tribe to which the interpreter did not belong and of which the latter had heard but little. A warlike nation—sort of arctic Aztecs—save that they fought not for conquest or spoils, but that there might be abiding peace. And whenever the flash- ing mystery of the northern lights showed itself, it was a sign that "approval was theirs. “Tradition had it, the priest had told him, that one day no man in all the world would fight his neighbor, and when that day arrived the aurora would flash forth in an intensity never known before. And it would never fade so long as peace re- mained. And the seals and walrus would come forth in great herds and the waters would be teeming with fish. No man would hunger so long as the aurora flamed. “So, whenever the aurora wakened, the priest invoked it to remain constant, that 95 it might be the sign that universal peace was here. And this was the symbolism of his mystic incantations. “Just then I heard the rough voice of a bosun’s mate ordering Atoonyak to ‘pipe down the caterwauling.’ I sought my berth. ‘““A few days later we dropped our mud- hook at Seattle. The next morning some one observed that Atoonyak and his in- terpreter had not rallied for breakfast, cer- tainly an unusual circumstance. When we discovered a dingey missing from the boat- boom, where it had been made fast the night before, we decided it was unnecessary to search the ship for them.” HARMON paused and flicked the dead stub of his cigaret into a scupper. He sat silent for a moment, gazing at the oriflamme of the aurora which still painted the sky. “When a police-boat found our dingey, our interest in Atoonyak and his companion rapidly subsided,” Harmon resumed. ‘We hauled over to the navy-yard for repairs. We found the place deserted by all war- ships in commission. The Pacific Fleet, a mere skeleton during the war, as practi- cally all of its units had been doing convoy work in the Atlantic, was now in Mexican waters, we were told. We of the Reindeer vaingloriously boasted that our craft, with its battery of three-inch rifles, could whip anything at the station. b “Repairs finished, we moved out to Port Townsend in the Straits, to coal and pro- vision and await orders. And one night a week later, while I was idly listening to an interchange of code messages between two Japanese ships far out at sea, I heard the big wireless station at the navy-yard begin calling me. “T leisurely snapped back the ‘go-ahead’ ~ signal and he shot the message at me so fast I could hardly keep up with him. It was in navy code, and he made me repeat to make sure there was no error. “By orders of Captain Millete, I always kept hidden in a locker in the wireless-room one of the lead-covered code-books, so that I could translate messages for him to save him the bother. In half a minute I had deciphered the radiogram. It was as clear and yet vague as it was cryptic. “Proceed with all speed to Honak Harbor and hold at all costs. Further orders en route. “BORDEN, acting. comicbook com