Adventure Magazine Cover — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

Yellow Treasure mine in the red haze; and then there was a loud report behind me, and I felt a sledge- hammer blow on my thigh. It spun me around, and I saw, crouching against the deck-house, a Chinese with two revolvers, sniping into the mélée. My leg was refusing to move; I could only crawl on all fours; and it was among the legs of the swaying crowd that I made my way toward him. I must have gone through the qutskirts of O’Day’s fight, for I was crushed to the deck by a body which had an indeter- minate mass instead of a head. The sound of the shots was my guide as to direc- tion. All our cartridges were gone, except the two I prayed Parsons was reserving for his daughter and May-sing. Burns, I saw through a momentary break in the pack around him, had smashed his rifle butt into splinters, and was taking knife-stabs on his left arm while he drove his right into the faces of his foes. Doc Parsons, mounted on the case of gold, was laying about him with the butt of his revolver. The fifty-foot strip of deck was a hell of screams, thuds, and hoarse shouts. Mac- kenzie, beating time with his clotted wrench, was singing a hymn. O’Day was delivering himself of the most frightful oaths, interspersed with shouts of “Take that!” and bursts of terrible laughter. The Chinese fought in silence, grimly cer- tain of victory. I passed the aft end of the hatch-coaming, and was within three feet of my quarry. He was intrenched behind the coaming, and using it as a rest for his elbow as he fired. He was going to press the trigger as O’Day’s back showed clear before him, when I reached out a hand and grasped the pistol. | In an instant he had snatched up the other revolver and fired it in my face with a roar that stunned me; the bullet fanned my ear and buried itself in the calf of a Chinese behind me. Then, with a blind effort, I raised myself and fell on him bodily. His head bent forward under my weight; I put my hands on his shaven skull and forced it still further between his knees. He tried to scream but his breath was shut off as his neck crumpled. Then there was a crack, and he gave way entirely. “Back!” roared O’Day, in a new access of fury. ‘“We’re done, boys! Give ’em a last rush!’ 35 The fore end of his rifle had come off in his hands, and the barrel and splintered stock had flown over the side. Now he leaped off the hatch with his fists clenched. Mackenzie and his aide rushed across to him and for a moment the main body of the Chinese shrank back against the bridge- house. It was the last flicker of aggression before our light went out. The next rush of the yellow men, the next raising of those knives in those long, cruel hands, would be the last. Doc Parsons, tearing himself out of the fight around Burns, staggered over to where Sylvia and May-sing were standing, cling- Ing together in the fear that had at last overtaken them; and drew the revolver he had kept for them. 3 He was standing right by me, and I heard him saying good-by to his daughter. It was at this moment that May-sing’s eyes fell on me, lying there with the Chinese beneath me, staring at the momentary halt in the battle as if it were a drama which was interesting but which did not concern me in the least. I was wondering which of the devils who were leering there in the light of our funeral pyre—the blazing bridge—would find me helpless and send me after the others. ‘‘Car-ter!” cried May-sing, piteously. Just as she left Sylvia’s arms and crouched by me, a Jar rafi through the ship, as if some other vessel had brushed against it; and, as O’Day and his adversaries looked instinctively toward the side from which the jar had come—it was to starboard, just aft of where we were standing—there glided into view alongside, a masthead, from the top of which a Chinese, judging his moment, leaped to the deck with a line m his hand. There was a snarl from both O’Day and the Chinese; a movement to fall on this new intruder who might be of either side; when suddenly May-sing rose from my side with a scream of Chinese words which checked the attack and turned all eyes on her. A moment later the man with the line had drawn up a rope ladder from the motor- launch alongside—from the height of its masthead I judged it to be such—and then the miracle happened. Over the side, still in the torn rags of his rich garments, with the dried blood closing many more wounds than he had had when he rushed through the door after Murchi- son, came the grim form of Hop-see-Long. CoOMmicaooa S (© inn