Adventure Magazine Cover — page 35: what you’re looking at

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

Buried Gods In the cooling of the twilight, for in the bottom of the pit the light lingered longer than the tropical dawning on the surface, the lunatic awoke. Dorsay was squatted in a corner by the stack of ivory. He noticed that the man looked around expectantly. On seeing him, he giggled, and, shambling across, sat down close to him like a lost cat seeking protection. Yet the friendly action in this creature, with only the resemblance of a human being, made Dor- say shudder. As soon as dark had fallen the fellow be- came restless, and, prowling about, began those ghastly giggles and shrieks, seemingly engaged in a monstrous game of hide and seek. A vision of himself, mowing and giggling, joining every night in this hor- rific play, sent Dorsay pacing to and fro in the darkness unable to tear his eyes from regarding the brilliant stars above. There were no drums. He passed the night in slow pacing to and fro, feeling as if he was an officer of the watch on the Flying Dutchman, knowing he was doomed never to reach port. Dorsay was rather astonished at the way in which he became accustomed to the gig- gling and shrieking of his companion, oc- cupied in a world of primitive imagination, the mystery of which only a child could understand. The practical reason for play- ing at night and sleeping during the day was manifest to his calmer mind: in the chilly air one required exercise, lacking any method of making a fire or preserving natural heat. About an hour after the rim of the tunnel had been stained crimson by the unseen sun a Calabash containing goat-flesh, two chick- ens, and a gourd with milk warm from the cow was lowered. But the sight of the food cheered him. Even his useless project of “dropping one” would have been impossible; for they did not reveal as much as a head, pushing the gourd over the rim most cautiously. Evidently the natives did not trust their gods, if such they were, although they fed them well. The morning he spent anxiously watching for the first ray of sunlight to reach the bot- tom of the pit. His “pal,” as he termed the lunatic with a faint smile, revealing the heart of the man in adversity, slept as usual, and he followed suit. Many days and nights passed as like each 29 other as cigars in a box. He refused to count them—on the same principle that any man who spent his time solely counting the number of possible days to his life would probably become insane, or as a philosophic smoker on a desert island would refuse to calculate how many smokes remained in the one box saved from the wreck. Rather to his astonishment the fate of the little doctor appeared to have become a dematerialized memory, as indeed had many other facts of life—his mother, probably in Bar Harbor at this time of the year; a mar- ried sister, whom he had thought he cared for more than any other in the world, at Salem, N. C.; a lawyer brother in New York; and others. In spite of his will to the contrary concrete facts of life loomed as large as a pyramid in a desert: anxiety that the calabash of food would appear on the skyline; when the first ray of yellow heat would reach a tactile distance; when it would vanish too far up the wall to reach. . He was conscious, too, that he had grown older; that if ever he escaped he would be a man, no longer merely a care- less boy bent on seeing something of the world. But usually he dodged these reflections; deliberately he tried to shut his mind to the future, for a good reason. His attitude was summed up or symbolized by a habit of sitting with clenched jaws regarding the amiable imbecilities of the other man while he repeated as if it were an incantation: “Pye got to hold out. Never become like that. I can doit. I will Awd 4} ILLIMITABLE days and _ nights Bae 4 were broken one afternoon when the w= curve of the sun was a man’s height above the pit bottom. Dorsay was seated against the wall on the spot where the last ray had disappeared, contemplating the charm, the message written in blood by his pal, who was sleeping in the ivory hut, pon- dering vaguely upon the strange chance that had caused him to buy that insignifi- cant talisman which had led him into such a dismal plight, when a muffled yell, fol- lowed by gnome-like echoes, caused him to’ stare alarmedly at the cave mouth. From the ghostly gleaming teeth of the fantastic dragon was erupted the form of_ Dorkin, bloody-faced and streaming oaths like the disheveled victim of some violent encounter. COPMMICOOOKS (E@)