Adventure Magazine Cover — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

Yellow Treasure VI Cea 4THE ax thundered again; one of the aa bolts holding the door-frame to the posts flew droning across the room; a revolver, thrust through the shattered panel, spat a bullet into the back of the officer to whom had been entrusted the duty of killing Burns and me in case of need; and then the whole door gave inward, and with a spring from the fall to which his momentum had carried him, O’Day was among our guards, slashing right and left with that fearful ax. One Chinese, trying to oppose its sweep with a futile sword-blade, crashed into a corner split from shoulder to breast-bone; another, slower than the rest at flinging down his weapons, staggered back, his face smashed by a thrust from the ax-helve; and then, as the four engineers and dozen native- police of the rescuing-party rushed into battle with the Tong-guards at the other end of the apartment, O’Day drew the red- dened blade over our manacling ropes, and we were free. “Get a coupl’a swords and come on,” gasped the captain, grasping his ax a foot from the blade and hurling himself into the fray. A minute after the others, Doc Parsons had entered. He was standing in the door- way, an incongruously huge revolver in each pen firing steadily into the writhing mass. te) Tong-men which was forcing back the first rush of the police toward the council, now cowering and shivering on its silk cushions. It was under cover of his bullets that Burns and I chafed our wrists until sensation returned to them. It was obvious from the first that only by the most desperate efforts could any of us escape from that hell-den alive; and it was with hands still blue-white and numb that Burns and I picked up yataghans dropped by our escort and started forward. Just as we did so the weight of the guards around the walls, who had swung across the room and now formed a cordon in front of the council, forced our men back a clear three yards. | In the moment’s breathless pause that followed, I saw old Hop-see-Long rise slowly from the floor. His silken cap had disap- peared. His face was bruised by the feet of the fighters who had trampled him. His expression of bland dignity had given way 23 to a strange look of fury; and in his right hand he grasped a short sword of dull gray iron. For a moment the old man stood staring at the red-bloused line before him; then the ghastly head of Murchison rose above the press, and with a hoarse shout like a battle- cry, Hop-see-Long, son of Hung-sew-Tseuen sprang toward his enemy. Into the gap in the ranks created by his onslaught, re- volvers roaring, rushed four’ men of the native-police, to be surrounded and swal- lowed up as both wings of the Tong guard leaped toward us. I saw O’Day’s ax describe one glittering semicircle, and heard the revolvers of our engineers hurl four bullets into the mass. Then as Burns dropped on one knee to avoid a sword-stroke I sprang over to the defense of Doctor Parsons, who, his re- volvers empty, was grappling with one Chinese while another awaited a chance for a fatal thrust. One of the dragon-lamps had crashed into splinters under O’Day’s ax; the stone chamber was a hell of men struggling in a fog of oil-smoke, dimly lit by the red glow of the lamp remaining. O’Day was roaring like a bull; and sud- denly, sobered by the shock of feeling my blade slip into something soft and writhing, I heard my own voice shouting something unintelligible. Doc Parsons had clubbed the man who had grappled him and was re- loading, his face twisted into a comical look of pained remonstrance. I leaned against the door-post an instant to laugh at him; and in that instant, Mur- chison flashed past me and disappeared into the gloom of the corridor. On his heels, his pigtail flying, his face covered with blood, and his eyes blazing, came the half-naked form of Hop-see-Long, his short sword up- raised. . It was as a giant Chinese rushed forward to intercept the old man that I interfered. It seemed to me that the real and would-be leaders of the Tae-ping Tong should settle their differences alone. Forgetting my sword, I hurled myself at the Chinese’s legs with a football-tackle. The cold breath of steel puffed past my ear; then he fell with a thud, and we rolled grunting and tearing at each other under the feet of the fighters. At the instant of his fall I shifted my grip to his throat, and to this I held until his struggles ceased and his head rolled side- wise. GOMIIGHOO S CO@ inn