Adventure Magazine Cover — page 162: what you’re looking at

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

156 end of the passage and the vast nothing out beyond. Twenty more feet! The flickering, battered torch was failing, the light was dim. Twenty more feet! And yet the thing charged on. Ten feet! And then the jump! © The thing leaped up. Leaped high above their heads. A jutting rock, standing out from the wall, loomed in the dimness and threw black shadows above it. The thing’s hands gripped the outstand- ing rock. The thing pulled up, rose above it, went down. And disappeared! “Phew!” And the sweltering Bertie leaned against a wall and wiped his dripping face. “‘____!” The graybeard limply leaned and struggled for breath. “That was a fiendish scrap if ever there was one.” “Wicked, Frank. Id sooner face a mil- lion wild cats than that mad thing again.” “Mad! I should say so, Bertie! If we’d been the surprized instead of him that man’s strength might have finished us.”’ Panting the men were silent and for a while stood still; the last remaining twigs of torch caught fire and were fading. “No use following even if we could get up, Frank, is it?’’ Bertie queried presently. The blood still oozed and dripped upon his shirt and he was weakening. “Not a bit, Bertie. We must get fresh torches and get the Kaffirs to help us up.” “All right then. Let’s go back.” Slowly, stiffly they turned and felt their way along; soon it was dark; darkness with the feel of satin.. “Hopeless, eh, Frank?” Bertie surmised as they carefully touched the walls for guidance. ‘“Hopeless—quite hopeless, Bertie. i never saw a white man quite so bad as that.” “One of the Tombs’ lost ones? Some of Tombs’ business?” “Undoubtedly. Some chap who’s dis- graced some notable family.. And that kind family calmly paid this Tombs to bring him here and lose him.” “Just murder, eh? Technical murder and nothing else?” “Murder! Yet so far off it missed their brazen consciences.” “Tt couldn’t, Frank. ’em. They hadn’t any.” It couldn’t miss Adventure “T think you’re right.” the graybeard moralized, then relapsed into thought. The winding passage ended and by the quaking Kaffirs the two men slumped and rested. ‘All here, M’Poine?”’ the graybeard pres- ently asked. “Vehbo, M’Lungu,”’ the Kaffir answered shakily. “All here. Where did the spirit go, M’Lungu?”’ In the still darkness the graybeard’s smile was grim. “That was no spirit, M’Poine. That was a white man.” But in the still darkness the Kaffir shook his head. “TRona, craft!” With wounds bound with strips torn from his shirt, Bertie stood beneath the outjut- ting rock, and looked appraisingly up. “Tf you and the Kaffirs will lift me, Frank, I can pull you up after me,” he suggested. “Pll need some pulling, Bertie. Only a monkey can make that leap alone. I thought I felt a sudden sloping drop when they brought us in.” “So did I, Frank. The angle almost spilled me once.” With ease the crowd raised the white man above them, and he pulled himself up and out of sight. Then quickly his head and arms appeared again. “Come on up, Frank. There’s a passage here just as big as the one you’re in.”’ Together the two men stood upright, and, lighting torches, looked around them. The outjutting rock had come up four feet in front of a hole the height of a crouching man, and from below it had but sent a fur- ther shadow to mix with the blacker sha- dows all about. Once through the hole the passage broadened out so that four could walk abreast. “Now we shall have to be careful, Bertie,” the graybeard cautioned. ‘We may turn a corner any second and run bang into day- light, and then our torches will finish us.” For a moment Bertie thought. “T’ll go ahead, Frank,’ he said. “Keep ahead a score of feet or so and only you carry a light. Then, if there’s any sudden day- light ll see it all the quicker.” For ten, fifteen, twenty minutes—for a whole mile—the men went easily along. The way was sandy, the turns but few and the roof always far on high. M’Lungu. Tagati! Witch- Eomichboo S (E)