Adventure Magazine Cover — page 148: what you’re looking at

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

142 The sisters squatted in a half-circle be- fore him. The valley was quiet save for the small sound of the wind, and from the river came the shouts of the fishermen who were concealed by a low bluff near the bank. At the lower end of the valley the colors of sunset were in the sky, with heaped up clouds altering their shapes and colors, as if busily seeking the ideal of beauty and nearing it more and more. As Lean Ak stood facing the vision that comes into the west, his feverish mood sent out of control by the influence of the hour, he chanted a pan: “Before there were men the Rhinoceros lived. There is no strength like the strength of the Rhinoceros. Man is an ant beside the Rhinoceros. Even the mammoth must die before the Rhi- noceros. The sun is bright as he falls behind the hills; He is a Rhinoceros. Colored like snow rimmed with fire, Yonder cloud is a Rhinoceros. _ The whole world is a Rhinoceros.” Higher and higher in the hunter-artist leaped the strong ardor that lives in men who follow the chase. He was in an hour when his love for the hunting-tradition of his race surged passionately, the mighty hunting-tradition that had begun its decline, and his spirit returned fervently to the gods of his ancestors, to the greatest of the gods, to the rhinoceros. How he yearned to lead his men against one of those divine beasts; prayerfully encompass its death and then eat it—as men eat their gods! The six daughters of Ufu the Great swayed with the rhythm of the dithyramb. ‘They were fascinated by their lover’s impas- sioned psalmody. ‘Their eyes were fixed on him, their eyes were opened wide and lighted. They were seized with admiration for the Rhinoceros, and for men who lived by killing fearful beasts, even rhinoceroses. They were turned from the life and spirit of their own tribe, and were given over to the hunting- chief’s worship of the grandiose past. They were no longer the six daughters of Ufu the Great, but now Lean Ak’s six wives. And in the fire of primitive passion they rose above the dark, stagnant multi- tude of obese cave women, and took hold their artist-lover’s radiant thought. After.a pause Lean Ak told his six wives how he had found salvation in the excellent wall-spaces of the tunnel, and how, after his pictorial magic had ended the scarcity Adventure of game, and after his service to the chief- tain-magician had been completed, they ‘would live with him in a good home cave among hills that swarmed with noble beasts. And they would be the wives, not of a fish- catcher, but of a hunting-chief who would lead his men each day to the dangers of the chase. And they would have sons by him, sons upon sons; and descendants through un- numbered generations; and all of them would be brave, stalwart men, and would bear the name of Ak, and would cleave to the hunting-life, and would fight with shaggy beasts long after he, Lean Ak, had become a rhinoceros away in the cloudy land beyond the farthermost hill. The six wives groaned with delight as their minds embraced the vision. Shouts sounded near by. Half-way up the hill stood Ufu the Great and several of his fishermen. They stared with surprize at the gaunt figure of the hunting-chief. Finally the chieftain-magician, as if to test his senses, kept his way upward, and went near to Lean Ak and peered into his face incredulously. Lean Ak returned the stare disdainfully. Ufu the Great had never before seemed so fat, so unkempt, so full of earthy humors. Across the chieftain-magician’s shoulder was slung a huge fish—the choicest trophy of the day. It whipped the hunting-chief’s contempt to frenzy. ° “The Fish did not eat you?” Ufu the Great questioned disappointedly. “Fish-catcher,” shouted Lean Ak, “your fish is a worm.” The gaudily painted face of Ufu the Great warped with astonishment and in- dignation. He was so overcome that he could only sputter unintelligibly. Lean Ak saw that he had exceeded pru- dence, and that his anger was baffling his plan to carry on his art in the tunnel. He must placate Ufu the Great, though the thought galled him. A light broke. He would master the difficult situation—of which, he remem- bered, his insubordinate venturing into. the tunnel was a large factor—by showing VUiu the Great what a mean and senseless thing it was to worship such a thing as a fish, and by convincing him with burning elo- quence that the greatest of the gods was the Rhinoceros. Ufu the Great passed from a condition of speechless anger to one of equally speechless CORNICLOO© S (C@