Adventure Magazine Cover — page 163: what you’re looking at

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

- meal, and then got into the saddle. The Temple of the Ten When morning came Severn found that a swirling fever was getting a grip upon him, and the thumb was swollen and pain- ful. Alarmed, he tried to open it up and alleviate the inflammation, but without much result. Sir Fandi had gone into a deep coma of exhaustion, and Severn did not - disturb him. He could see that the Rajput’s wound was looking in bad shape. With noon Severn prepared some food and forced the Rajput to eat. Sir Fandi wakened -but seemed like a drunken man, and fell asleep again immediately after eating. Severn, who now perceived clearly that he himself was growing hourly worse and that he must have been given some septic infection from that purplish grass, was intensely alarmed. When the afternoon drew on toward evening, Sir Fandi Singh wakened in great weakness, but with a clear head. Severn, - flushed and almost incoherent, related to him all that had taken place. raised himself to his elbow and smiled. “To the temple, Severn! I’m in a bad way, but you’re in worse. We must get there at all costs. Place me in the saddle, and Ill stick there—born to it. You’re the one to be tied on. If we start at once, we'll get to the temple some time tonight—pos- sibly not until morning. But we must get there. Kilgore had drugs and medicines.” Severn assented. They made another The effort of saddling and of helping Sir Fandi up almost finished Severn, but he clambered aboard and they were off by dark. There was no losing the way in this defile. To Severn, that night was a purgatory of swirling torment and mad visions. Be- fore his fevered brain danced the horrible figure of Esrun, the Kashmiri woman; Sir Fandi stated that she was beyond doubt a Rajput of some high blood, but Severn was past reasoning the thing out. The hours dragged in terror and frightful agony. With the dawn the horses were picking their own way toward the temple. Sir Fandi was riding in grim silence, saying” nothing of the broken clots that let his wound bleed afresh. Severn saw the flag waving over the gateway of the temple and in a mad fantasy put spurs to his horse and went ahead at a gallop. The Rajput fol- lowed slowly, silently. Severn reined up in the courtyard. His fevered brain was astonished by the silence ‘no sound at all! The Rajput. whack greeted him—no shout of welcome, On the walls he could see the figures of the Sikhs. In the courtyard he could see the machine gun trained on the gateway, with three Sikhs seated beside it. Yet they did not rise at his approach. He dismounted. When Sir Fandi rode into that court- yard he saw Severn lying senseless on the sand. And down upon them looked the Sikhs from the walls, with dead eyes that saw not. The Rajput painfully got out of the saddle, staggered, fell, came to his feet again. He drew his pistol and fired twice in the air’ There was no response. = CHAPTER VIII “STEEL BODY NEEDS IRON FOOD.” HENG WU was a little Chinaman with Oxford and Glasgow degrees, a Croix de Guerre and a bland smile that concealed a bull-dog jaw. Behind him, to the Temple of the Ten Dromedaries, rode thirty stal- wart Manchu camelmen. Out in the desert Sheng Wu had been at- tacked. He ordered his men to scatter in the dusk of evening and gave up the caravan to the raiders. In the dusk of dawn he had fallen upon those raiders, occupied with their loot, and had smitten them hip and thigh. Then, with thirty men remaining, he had consulted his maps and ridden for- ward. And now he was riding up to that open and unguarded temple, where a torn five-barred flag floated over the gateway. Dead men lined the walls. Sheng Wu rode forward alone, with one Manchu officer, and dismounted inside the open gateway. When he turned from his kneel- ing camel, he saw that this temple was an abode of the dead, and that these dead had been Sikh troopers. He called forward his men. and ordered them to search. He went with the fore- most and they discovered no living creature. At last they came to a rear chamber of the temple and when they opened the door a 153. great gaunt figure rose before them. Sheng | Wu looked twice at it and then saluted. “T am here, Sir Fandi,” he said. The Rajput uttered a frightful Jaugh. Torn bandages, blood-rusted, encased his body; his proud features were haggard, his cComichoo Sj com