Adventure Magazine Cover — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

Dynamite Stories the highway. At one point the highway passes close to the edge of a precipice of con- siderable height, at the bottom of whose abrupt, ragged sides nestles a pleasant villa, owned by a wealthy New York business man. I had just paid a visit to this factory of explosives, and was walking leisurely along the road. At a distance of perhaps a hun- dred yards ahead of me there was one of the dynamite wagons, moving two tons of dyna- mite to the railroad. The driver had recently purchased a couple of fresh horses, which he pronounced “a spanking pair.” They were rather restive and shied at every- thing they saw. But the driver was a brave fellow and a strong one, and he had no fear of being unable to control them. All at once, under the impulse of a gust of wind, a newspaper flared up in front of them. Quick as a flash, they bolted, rush- ing headlong, the bits held firmly between their teeth; while the high-piled load of dynamite swayed from side to side mena- cingly as the wagon took the short curves of the road. At this instant the foreman of the dyna- mite-works flashed by, driving a pair of horses to an empty wagon. He had observed the plight of the driver of the dynamite wagon, and was lashing his horses in a mad pursuit. Although the foreman’s team was infe- rior, still his wagon was empty, and he was soon neck and neck with the runaway horses. For several hundred yards it was a close race, neither one achieving any appreciable advantage over the other. Nearer and nearer were they coming to the precipice, which yawned just where the road turned sharply to the right. Still on and on they flew, when, in a moment of advan- tage, the foreman leaped from his wagon, full upon the neck and head of the nigh horse of the runaway pair, and brought the team to a standstill within less than fifty feet of the precipice and directly over the villa I have mentioned. Had not this driver possessed both the presence of mind and the athletic qualifica- tions necessary, coupled with great daring, that load of dynamite must inevitably have gone over the precipice as the horses struck the curve. Little the peaceful occupants of the villa under the hill imagined what a calamity at that fearful moment overhung them! 7 663 THE LOADED CHINAMAN 2B hee G the Russo-Japanese war a certain officer of the Czar, who was an impatient, overbearing person and a great martinet, had a Chinese servant whom he treated with the utmost harshness. One of his favorite methods of inflicting punish- ment for offenses was to order the China- man to leave his presence and, as the fellow went, to give him a hard kick. The Chinaman aired his grievances one day to a Japanese spy, whom he took to be a brother Chinaman. The Jap suggested padding the seat of the Chinaman’s trousers to prevent further contusions, and this was done, the padding being furnished by the Jap. <A rubber hot-water bag was filled with nitroglycerin, and percussion caps were placed in positions where they would be exploded by any sudden blow. The unfortunate Chinaman was wholly unaware of the nature of the padding. At the next meeting of the Russian with his servant, the poor Oriental inadvert- ently spilled some tea upon the officer’s new uniform. ‘The enraged master pro- ceeded to dismiss the Chinaman from his presence in the usual way, but with some- what more precipitation. One of the officer’s legs was blown off, one arm was crushed to pulp, four ribs were broken, and it was more than a day before he was restored to consciousness. When he did come to, he found himself a prisoner in a Japanese hospital, having been left behind by the retreating Russians. As to the Chinaman himself, poor fellow, he never knew that he had been loaded. BETWEEN THE TIERS as cold-storage plant of a dynamite- factory blew up and sent a rain of large stones over the countryside to an astonishing distance. In a _ dynamite- magazine half a mile away there was piled tier on tier of high explosives. One of the flying stones descended through the steel roof of this magazine, as if opposed by nothing stronger than paper. It dropped between two of the piles of boxed high ex- plosives and penetrated the floor. The diameter of that stone, as they found when they dug it out of the floor, was just eleven inches; the space between the tiers was just fourteen inches. COMICLOOCKKS. EGO