Adventure Magazine Cover — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

YNAMTI Hudson Maxim EpiTor’s Note—The name of Hudson Maxim, author of the accompanying series of Dynamite Stories, is perhaps the most distinguished in the development of high explosives and kindred inven- tions. First to make smokeless powder in the United States, he has worked with dynamite, max- imite, stabilite and motorite, with torpedoes and rams, with projectiles and armor-plate, with auto- matic guns and detonating fuses, as a veritable fa- miliar of these grim agents of destruction. Long the most famous inventor in his field, he has gath- ered many an anecdote of explosion. Though some of these stories make saturnine sport of death, they are unique in their crisp dramatic quality, and ADVENTURE is fortunate in giving them to its readers. THE SINGULAR GOOD FORTUNE OF AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN T SO happened that during a tour of inspection seven of us were together, going over the works. On entering the gun- cotton dry-house, I noticed a strong odor of nitric acid. “Out of here—quick!’’ I cried. ‘The place is going to blow up!” There were perhaps a hundred pounds of dry guncotton in the room at the time, spread out in pans. As was afterward learned, the foreman, being in a hurry for the guncotton, had turned live steam into the pipes instead of circulating hot water through them as instructed. We were barely out of the room when the guncotton burned with a flash, wrecking the building, and setting fire to the fragments. I was just congratulating myself that no one had been injured by the explosion, when it was discovered that one of the party, the Englishman, the even tenor of whose way nothing could accelerate or disturb, who feared nothing, had not quite made up his mind in time to get out of the room before the flash occurred. On seeing him emerge at last from the zone of destruction, I was horror-stricken, for apparently every hair had been burned from his head and face, while shreds of skin hung from his hands and cheeks and brow; the dark portions of his eyes even were white under the influ- ence of the dreadful shock he had under- gone. Nevertheless, the Englishman’s usual phlegmatic manner was wholly unruffled, and he spoke in his conventional voice, hardly tinged with enthusiasm: “T say, Mr. Maxim, you know, it’s not often one has the chance to witness what actually occurs, by Jove!”’ LIVING BOMBS N AMERICAN reporter, who was with the Japanese during the Manchurian campaign, told me the following story: Column after column of Japanese had assaulted a Russian position, the capture of which was exceedingly desirable. Col- umn after column of the brave little fellows were swept down by the unerring gun-fire 6601 COMICLOOCKKS. EO