Adventure Magazine Cover — page 123: what you’re looking at

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

The Doom Trail had ceased to feel fear or misgiving. I was conscious only of a great weariness and thirst. The clamor that dinned in my ears, the weapons that jarred the post at intervals, the wild figures that leaped in the firelight—all combined in a weird blur that gradually became a coherent picture as my mind recalled for the second time the dying words of the Cahnuaga in the glade by the Great Trail. “Be sure that whatever you do you can- not equal the ingenuity of the Ga-go- Shea Hark! What was that eery sound that stole through the shadows, a sliding, minor chant that wailed and died away? But the picture went on shaping itself in my mind. ‘““*T seem to see pictures in the firelight of a stake, and a building with a tower and a bell that rings, and many of the Ga-go-sa dance around you, and your pain is very great,’ ” Yes, there was the picture: our stakes, side by side, two instead of one; the fires that roared and flamed, the figures that danced and yelled; and beyond, across the village, the tower with the “bell that rings,” looming above the trees. Angl as I looked, the sickle moon, silvery-bright and sharp as a sword, protruded its upper horn over the wooden tower. / Of a sudden I realized that the shouting had died down. ‘The prancing figures were at rest. But into the circle of firelight swayed the hideous column of False Faces, their masks of monstrous birds and beasts and reptiles seeming alive with horrid purpose in the shifting gloom, their feet moving harmoniously in the hesitant step of the dance, their voices united in the monotonous music of their chant. They strung a circle, as they had done the day before, and halted, heads wabbling this way and that. There was a brief pause, and I noticed de Veulle, risen to his feet and staring intently behind me, where the wall of pines made a perfect background for the spectacle. A sigh burst from the half-seen throngs of savages. ‘““Ga-go-sa Ho-nun-as-tase-ta!”’ I craned my neck, and as well as the thongs permitted me peered around the stake to which I was lashed. A white figure flitted from the protection of the trees and glided toward us. The False Faces started a queer, rhythmic air, ac- 1t7 companied by gently throbbing drums. The figure commenced to dance, arms wide, hair floating free.. Beside me Ta-wan-ne- ars choked back a groan of hate and love and fought fruitlessly against the rawhide thongs. =e "TWAS Ga-ha-no. She danced for- “i ward, passing-between our stakes and into the open arena which was delimited by the vague, crouching forms of the False Faces. She wore again her ceremonial uniform, the kilt and moccasins; but this time they were white, fashioned of skins taken from the bellies of young does. Her limbs and body, too, were coated with’ some white substance that made her gleam like a delicate marble statue when she pos- tured in the flickering radiance of the fires. Her hair floated about her like a black mist, first concealing, then revealing, the perfect, swelling lines of her figure. She *tossed up her arms in a curving gesture toward the moon, riding low above the treetops. The music of the attendant priests swung into a faster measure, the pulsing of the drums became subtly dis- turbing, commanding. “O So-a-ka-ga-gwa,” she cried, “I, your servant, the Mistress of the False Faces, begin now the Moon Feast we make in your honor!” She resumed her dance, but ’twas very different from the graceful, pleasing steps she had first used. I know not how to de- scribe it, save perhaps that ‘twas like the music, provocative, appealing to the basest instincts in man, indecent with a peculiarly attractive indecency. It was, I think, the dance of creation, of the impulse of life, one of the oldest and in its perverted way one of the truest dances which man ever devised. savage people, primitive.and unashamed. You could feel its influence upon the bystanders, the thousands who stood or crouched or sat around the curve of the am- phitheater beyond the lines of False Faces. You could feel their rising emotion; the in- stincts, normally half-tamed, that awakened in them; the cravings that slowly began to dominate them. You could hear the catching breaths, the yelps of. satisfac- tion, the growing spirit of license, of utter savagery. Faster went the measure of the dance. Faster whirled the glistening white figure. It could only be danced by a COPMICOOOKS (E@)