Adventure Magazine Cover — page 76: what you’re looking at

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

832 Swiftly he ran over in his mind the events of the past few months. The failure of the Sierra Exploitation Corporation, leaving him penniless and prospectless in San Fran- cisco, had been the beginning of the adven-.- ture. Then came his sudden determination to try trader’s luck in the Tuamotu or Mar- quesas group, the impaling of the Cycle of Cathay on the sunken reef, his preservation, alone of the passengers and crew of the ill- -fated ship, and the drifting on his wrenched spar to the shores of the rich and supposedly uninhabited islet. It was a long, dreary, waiting game; but he assured himself with the sound reasoning that sooner or later some tramp of the ocean highways, blown out of her course, must see the signal, and that he could and would keep off claw, fang and fever until the ailotted time. But now—well, it was no longer a mere question of time. Another factor had entered into the problem. He drooped his head upon his arms and wondered whether he had lost the art of weeping. WHEN he broke off his gloomy reverie it was late. He had never dared to remain outside his rock lair after the swift, gorgeous sunset of that lati- tude. And now the last yellow-purple-pink rays had almost faded from the western sky. Clutching firmly his stone ax, he began to force his way through the rich tangle along the half-path he had made from the signal on the promontory. Within the jungle it was already quite dark. Before he had reached the lair he was merely groping his way. 7 The den in which he had kept his long, black night-watches was merely a fissure in the cliff, dry, elevated, and with a single way of ingress, which he effectually closed each night by moving a huge, round, well-bal- anced stone. Into the recess now not even a ray of starlight penetrated. He was able from much practise, however, to feel his way around the stone into the cleft. Once inside, he began the hard tug necessary to close the entrance. As he put forward his immense strength against the big rock he fancied he heard a slight sound behind him as of a tensely- drawn breathing. He desisted and, clutch- ing the stone ax with his back against the rock wall of the cavern, waited. The breath- ing was not resumed, but he sensed some- thing stealing upon him, slowly, cautiously. _ Adventure A pebble, dislodged, trickled in the gloom —there was apatter of bare feet—then a rush. He struck blindly with the ax, missed, collided with an erect form, which slipped away easily. Dropping the clumsy ax, he felt with his strong hands. He would have bolted through the unclosed passage and trusted his life to a run amuck through the forest, but he knew that the blow would fall before he could reach the entrance. A Berserker rage came upon him. He emitted the defiant whoop of the evening’s chase and flung himself at the shuffling noise in front. This time his arms closed upon something soft which twisted and squirmed like a boa- constrictor. A jagged point, suddenly upthrust, tore into his neck just under the chin. As he jerked his head back sharp teeth bit deep into his cheek. His brain swirling, beaten for the first time, he relaxed his grip. A shrill cry sounded in his ears, a form bounded past, and as he pulled himself together, won- dering why he had not ceased to live, he heard the receding patter of the Wild Thing in the wood. "Ale There was one grim, fixed purpose in his mind. He must kill this wild man of the island—for he had come to believe that the creature was solitary like himself—or be killed. He could not go on this way, waiting, dreading, fearing. His torn neck and bitten cheek were very sore and painful and he limped rather for- lornly from the cleft; but as he stalked the forest with his primeval weapons once more in his clutch, the blood-lust mounted in his veins. He could not understand how he had put up so puny a struggle the night before. Now his one great desire was to fight, to conquer, to kill. Nothing else mattered— AT SUNRISE he bestirred himself. not even that half-forgotten world beyond the purple rim of sea and sky. He ran down his quarry sooner than he had hoped. Preparing to descend into a wide ravine, he checked himself just in time to avoid scrambling down the steep descent almost upon the head of his prey. The savage sat upon the trunk of a fallen tree, his leaf-tufted head drooped forward upon his arms. The pose suggested to Mayland his own utter loneliness and solitude. In spite of the barbaric half-dress, the wild thing appealed to him more as an object of COmiclbook ©