Adventure Magazine Cover — page 144: what you’re looking at

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

900 “The matter and its solution emphasize themselves. Look here, Agnew! How did this escape you?” Agnew gave a puzzled frown. A yet deeper groove had been cut in the lip of the crag—one which would draw to a yet narrower point the collected masses of rubble, ice or snow which the slopes would concentrate upon it. It was obvious that it overhung exactly the site of the ruined bridge. Agnew’s frown grew darker. “This is new, Mr. Gresham!” he cried. “When I first ascended here the snows were deeper, I allow, but this could not have been buried. And look here! It is artificial—it has been lately engineered!” THE four men lowered themselves carefully into the trench, for the snows, melting and refreezing, freez- and remelting, had covered the surface of the rock with verglas. A single false step and the stumbler would have ended his stumble three thousand feet below. ‘The simile of the shoot here was only too exact. The glazed surface ended upon the cliff’s utmost rim. They looked about them curiously. The ice covered the center of the great ditch in the stone, but at the sides, where the sun’s rays had exerted their strength, the rock was uncovered. And it bore the marks of recent tamping—here and there, indeed, was the grime of exploded blasting-powder. Art had been brought in to perfect Na- ture’s scheme. Jovan swore softly below his breath. “‘Tt is a question not only of ingenuity but of insolence! They could not expect this to remain undiscovered. Is this a threat? I read it so.” The others looked at him. ‘‘A threat?” they questioned. ‘‘A threat?” : The Albanian shrugged his shoulders. “They have placed this menace above the site of the bridge to warn us that it is com- manded and can not be rebuilt. What is to prevent them from blasting another such above each or any of the other sites we may choose? A little dynamite, a little more ingenuity, and the thing is done. Nay, this is a warning! troubled to disguise it. They do it with a smile and a high head!” ‘““No other spot is so favored by the slope of the hill,” objected Gresham. “At They have not | Adventure other points the collecting of avalanches would not be so much a matter of inevita- bility.” “The matter, to me, appears to be one of skill and dynamite and that alone,”’ said Jovan pessimistically. ‘I am open to con- tradiction, but it seems to me that any and every point of this cliff-head can be made to command any and every point in the ravine below. Am I wrong, signors?”’ . They shook their heads. It was tru enough. Wherever the bridge was built, the impending menace could be directed upon it by hostile hands. ‘‘A guard-house must be built and a guard maintained,” said Agnew doggedly. The Albanian made an ironic gesture at the surroundings. ‘‘ Your guard-house and its contents would be the first offering. made by the Winter snows to the river below. Where could you place it that it would not be a target for avalanches?”’ They were silent. The light of satisfac- tion that had illuminated Gresham’s face a few moments before had vanished. Into the silence of their meditation broke a sud- den exclamation of warning. It was Vilip’s voice that was raised and Vilip’s hand that was pointing to one of the terraces of stone which cut the hillside immediately above them. ‘““Who are these and what do they do?” he asked sharply. A couple of men had come into view. They halted and looked down. And then still silently, but with great swiftness, they bent as if with a common but unexpressed impulse and rolled a couple of boulders over the terrace edge. With incredible rapidity they repeated the operation once, twice, a third time. Before Gresham and his companions had fully realized the trap in which they were caught the white wave of avalanche was thundering down upon them, its crest only a few hundred yards away! Jovan called loudly upon the One God and His Prophet and seized Gresham’s arm. He took a flying leap which dragged him and his companion straight forward, as it seemed, into the path of the coming de- struction. Without halting to reason, and governed by instinct alone, Vilip and Agnew followed. The four leaped forward, stumbled and fell against a wall of soft and melting snow which lay in the full blaze of the new risen sun at the foot of a great COmiclbook C©