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 Land of Ophir Then he gave me a message and a sign. ‘The message told me to go unarmed and unafraid to the country which you, my lord, were seeking, and I said to myself that there I could make many surprizing discoveries, for by the sign he had given me I knew that I was safe from all danger. I came, and I saw the man who calls himself sultan; and he spoke much, telling me who he was and from what race he came. He spoke surpriz- ingly much.” ‘‘Again I believe you,” I muttered. ‘“‘And he took me here,” Sabah continued, “‘where we sit in the night among the holy ones; and when I saw the column upon which I sit, I fel! upon my knees and wept exceedingly, and my faith came back to me like sunlight upon the beautiful flower- face of a woman.” “Why?” interposed Fieldmorre. “Patience, my lord; I will tell you all, that you may know my peculiar and exalted position. Has my lord deigned to remark upon the writings upon the monuments here?”’ “Yes, I have. Some form of ancient Arabic, aren’t they?” ‘“‘No, my lord; they are the lost tongue, Aramaic. The place where Allah has led your profane feet is the ruins of the temple of El, which means in English, the Snake, the Father of Men, the Begetter of All, a temple made more than sixteen centuries before your prophet Christ.” “But how on earth could that be?” queried Fieldmorre. ‘‘The Aramean, as you say, couldn’t have been settled in Africa at that date?” “What do you know, you blind men of Europe?” demanded Sabah with a sudden touch of ferocity in his voice. ‘‘No, you are ignorant, my, lord,” he continued quietly. ‘For your race can only feel blindly at signs. By the peoples of your kind, Roman, Christian and Mohammedan, was all the Aramaic literature of surprizing wonder destroyed, save that one manuscript in the keeping of my mother. ‘‘What can your clever men tell of sixteen centuries before your prophet Christ’? What do they know of that the men of Islam destroyed in their pigful rage?”’ ‘“‘But,”’ said Fieldmorre, interested, ‘“‘why do you say ‘pigful’ about Mohammedans? Aren’t you one? You're always calling on Allah.” “T am of the true brothers of Islam. Do 115 you not know my lord, that Allah—the very name—was stolen by Mohammed? That Allah was the name of the god of what you call the pagans in Arabia? Ten thousand years before Mohammed was smitten by Aiésha, we were rulers of the world! They, destined by Allah—the true Allah—were our subject slaves, and in Africa were many what you call colonies. This have I read in the sacred manuscript, keeper of which is my holy mother.” Sabah paused and mumbled to himself in a tongue neither of us could understand. A cricket was making an ear-splitting noise close by, but I hadn’t noticed it until then; and my hand touched some hairy monster on my knee which I shook off mighty quick, yet queerly enough without any conscious sense of horror as usual. “And when my eyes rested on these things,’ continued Sabah, ‘‘a great big spirit descended upon me. I !ooked on the Gandhi and I saw my ancient enemy—this Gandhi, whose ancestors were the conquer- ors of Babylon before the time of Solomon, as you call him, by treachery took the daughter of the King of Aram Zobah to concubine, of whom, though he knows it not, this Gandhi is the descendant. ‘This I know according to the Aramaic scriptures. Here upon the sacred spot, the place of the city of the queen of Sheba.” He pointed a hand toward the shadows of the ruins. ‘There, within the temple upon the holy monument above the sacred black stone, is written the history of her reign. ‘There stood a man of surprizing shameful blood, yet a kinsman to me. And I knew that Allah had destined what I should have to do, “T did not reveal myself to him, else he would want to have me put to death, iust the same of course as I would have him. He called to me to be faithful to him, obey- ing without question. This man of shame- ful birth made big oaths by the holy ones whom he does not understand; for who should know the secrets of a Druse? He, a follower of Mohammed, and knowing nothing of the incarnation of the great God Darazi, last of the incarnations of Allah, the ancient and the true god; he, boasting that he was the descendant of world king to me of the same family as she who ruled upon this spot, Sheba, of the tribe of Sabah, of the family of Thabit ibn Kuna, whose ancestors were Abgar (C@ DOOK S C@