Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 74: what you’re looking at

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

1020 looked at her wonderingly, but Berwind tugged at the line. ‘All right there?” he called. Stuart turned. “Coming up!” he an- swered, and drove his staff anew into the snow. When they reached the top of the climb it was to find themselves on the edge of the wide ledge of lava. Beneath them at the left on the smooth gray-blue surface of the fiord, lay the Blessed Damozel, glimmering as white as the snow. On the far side of the ‘water rose a cliff similar to that they had just ascended and beyond that towered the black crumpled horns of the Bull. Behind them lay the gray sea, cold and unfriendly. Before them rose the truncated peak of Sigurda just across from the Bull; and in the narrow gorge between the two lay the white glacier and the stony black prow of its moraine. “The nightmare Death-in-Life!’’”’ quoted Mr. Lee softly. “We might say so,” retorted Berwind cheerfully, “‘but we find a little life springing up from the rocks here.” He plucked from the seam of two splintered rocks a stalk which bent under its fringe of feathery green. Nora Lee uttered an exclamation of pleasure. “The dear thing, flourishing here in this unholy moon country!” she cried. “ What is it, Dr. Berwind?”’ He smiled at her. ‘Wild oats,” he an- swered. ‘“‘This is the first time, I imagine, that that crop has ever been hailed as a good omen! But here in the Vatna, even wild oats a: ‘‘So long as it is alive!’ interrupted Mr. Lee. “I tell you, Berwind, this wilderness of rock and volcanic fire might easily get on one’s nerves. But this bit of friendly life ——I understand now, why green should be the color of hope. Lead on, Mr. Stuart!” Stuart smiled at him and drew the chart from his pocket. ‘‘It all tallies so far,” he said. ‘There is Sigurda rising from this table-land. Now for the cave, gentles!”’ He looked over his shoulder at Healy, who stepped a foot or so farther away. “If you take my advice before you proceed, you will ask Captain Healy to remain here with the lunch-basket and the rugs. If you don’t want to do that, Mr. Lee, and if—” he drew a long breath and something of his excitement trembled’in his voice—“‘if the Adventure cave is really there, if there is anything in it—will you just look with me and come away, taking Miss Nora and the Captain with you? Then Doctor Berwind and I will remain behind to get the—fossils—into portable shape. And we can get them little by little over to the yacht, and none of the crew need be any the wiser as to the nature of our geological prize.” [-<S9] MR. LEE looked faintly puzzled, efi but Berwind went around to his other side and spoke softly to him. “You see, if this treasure—these fossils,” he lifted his voice a shade on the word, “‘are really to be found in this place, the find will be of tremendous value—to a scientist like Mr. Stuart—to us all. We were saying that there are no police in these waters and when you come to think of it, sir, there are thirty men in that crew and we are three!”’ The owner of the Blessed Damozel looked a bit staggered by the notion, but he seemed to realize the good sense of it. Berwind laughed. ‘There is, in all prob- ability, not one broken sixpence in the place!”’ Mr. Lee nodded. As a matter of fact, his attention had suddenly begun to wander. He laid his hand on Berwind’s arm. ‘Let them all go ahead, and you lag along with me,” he said. ‘I want to speak to you.” -Berwind glanced sharply into his patient’s face. ‘Very well,” he said slowly. As they turned a little away from the others, Stuart bent his head over the trac- ings again. And Nora Lee stood very near him, watching his fur-gloved finger point out their route. ‘We walk on to the peak of Sigurda now,” he said. ‘‘Alack! the oak tree is no more, but no matter. One hundred paces up- ward—we decided that was five hundred feet, didn’t we?” Nora glanced ahead. “But, Mr. Stuart,” —it was the first time he had ever heard her speak his name in so unhostile a tone; he looked up and saw the puzzled frown and the far-away eyes—‘‘ the whole mountain of Sigurda is not five hundred feet high, from the floor of the gorge upward.” ‘““By George!” They stood looking ahead a moment at the contorted lava cone and then, with one accord, bent over the paper again. ‘“‘‘One hundred paces upward to the Red Rock of Half,’”’ said Nora slowly. _> Comicbook CO