Adventure Magazine Cover, October 10, 1921 — page 150: what you’re looking at

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

140 held him just out of reach of the menacing jaws of a gigantic rock python. When, at first call for retreat, the guard lines were drawn back to their original position, the call for vespers sounded from the old church. Within a few minutes the native population drifted ex masse through its portals, and at nine o’clock, when tat- too sounded and the garrison had apparently settled down to slumber, the lights above altar and nave flickered out one by one. A solemn hush fell over the temple of God, which, for the moment, had been given over to the hosts of the devil. A few women and children might have. been seen wending their way homeward under the light of the rising moon, and that was all. Again the guard lines were extended, and a special patrol marched from the quarters of one of the National Guard companies to take post around the apparently deserted place of worship. The major and his adjutant left head- quarters shortly afterward, walking briskly to the guard-house, followed by the two Moreys, Big Jake, the corral boss, and twenty picked men, ten of whom wore on their breasts the crosses that told of their prowess at the targets. They made their way up the trail to the top of Bunduk nan Kao. = There was a whispered order and the detachment took their places near the big bamboo. Big Jake fastened a lariat to one end of the rope hanging from the pulley above, and passed the other end back to the ten men who had stacked their arms a moment before. The sharpshooters took their places, lying prone at the crater’s edge, the muzzles of their rifles being hid- den in the grass. The major, the company shot-gun nestled lovingly in the hollow of his arm, stood watchful in the shadows thrown by the young bamboo shoots, springing from the parent tree. Kneeling at his side, the brass keys on the black box within tapping dis- tance of his nervous fingers, the adjutant waited as if for a word of command. The Moreys knelt behind the major, ready to transmit his whispered orders if occasion made necessary any change in plans. There was an uneasy scuffling on the platform below. The stage was set. The High Priest and his satellites were ready for their mummery. They felt safe from attack, the tunnel from the church to the Adventure crater being guarded by bolo-men; and the matted sides of the mountain had turned aside both native and Spaniard for years. They did not dream that the “gallery gods” on the crater’s brink were ready to take advantage of the slightest break in their lines. As if at a prompter’s command, the flute began its sobbing wail. ‘The single tap of a drum, and silence fell, deep as the pits of death. The watchers above stood as if carved from onyx, their outlines blending in the wavering shadows cast by the mists ever rising from the pool below. Again the flute, sweet as the whisper of Lethe, and the priests took up the strain, chanting as one: “Dahun Kao, Katipunan, Dahun Kao, Dahun Kao; Halikarao Katipunan, Halikarao, Haltkarao.” sas other side of the pool, tiny points = of foam which lengthened into broadening arrows, marked the advent of the herd of crocodiles that had made their home in the confines of the crater since their first parent stock had been entrapped in a volcanic upheaval hundreds of years before. The drum and the flute took up a livelier strain which grew louder and louder with each beat of the high priest’s snake- encircled wrist. A bugle now added its note. The noise of the singing drowned the swishing and bellowing of the crocodile herd below. Again a moment’s hush, fol- lowed by a clatter of tiny hoofs, and a young pig stepped mincingly from the mouth of the tunnel, champing its jaws as it devoured the trail of tiny yams which had drawn it along the unknown path. The bugle ceased its call, the drum its beating, and as each succeeding step drew the porcine explorer nearer the brink of the platform, the wailing of-the flute grew softer and softer, dying like a tired child’s cry as it sobs itself to sleep. It stood at the end of the trail, its inquir- ing snout thrust into the darkness where hung a tempting yam just out of reach. Below, the hungry crocodiles thrust their yawning muzzles upward, as if in antici- pation of the moment, when, driven by its own gluttony, the little porker would make that extra step forward which would land FROM the deep shadows on the cComicoooks C@