Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 176: what you’re looking at

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

174 Then he clambered back to his seat and sent the car forward. A black mass loomed ahead and slowly took shape in the waving glare of the one remaining headlight. “It’s Beachy’s Pier!’ shouted the doc- tor. “Ay gar!’ said Ole. ‘‘Ice she ban pile up on breakwater.” Just beyond the end of the concrete pier and boat-house a crescent-shaped concrete breakwater lies to shelter the motor-boats in Summer. In front of this, and seemingly all over the breakwater, upreared, contorted ice-cakes were piled. “Can we get through?” screamed the doctor. | ‘‘Ay tank ice she smashed up,” said Ole. ‘We ban try.” He sent the car forward. The doctor re- members little of the next few moments. Ole guided the car straight out upon the heaving mass of ice-cakes that were grinding against the concrete breakwater. Once the ice sank, and the rear wheels, finding water between two cakes, sprayed the riders with icy water. They sloshed and churned through the grinding pack, scraped along the concrete, turned shoreward and ran out onto solid ice again. Another tire blew out, but they stopped only to free the wheel of the shredded rub- ber, and, running on the two rear rims, they moved forward again. In five minutes more the doctor felt the force of the gale diminish- ing, and knew they were closer under the shelter of the heavily wooded hills inshore, ‘running just outside the piled-up shore- ice. “Ness, he ban drag out ice for Martin’s house,” said Ole. ‘‘Ay ban look for her track.” In a few minutes the one light revealed a breach in the ice wall, and from it a beaten track leading across the beach. Ole turned the car through this embrasure, and, pound- ing and lurching over frozen sand and hard- packed snow, they reached the road shel- tered by the giant pines, and a moment later turned into the trail that leads to the dunes. “3 FOR the first time Nature favored Si) them. No automobile can go over that trail of shifting sand. But on this night the rain and sleet, freezing upon the surface, had formed a crust upon which the car rode for half a mile to where all veg- Adventure etation ends, and the chaos of shifting sand commences. They fought their way up the first steep sand-dune and pounded and clanked down the lakeward slope. In the valley was an- other drift through which they struggled. The collision with that drift wrecked the remaining lamp. ‘They were in darkness save when the light from the great lamp on Betsie whirled and illuminated the skies above them. The roar of the surf beating upon the bars was deafening now, and the full force of the wind blew their words away as they screamed at each other. One more dune was crested, and, descending the next slope, another tire exploded. The car lurched side- ways, collided with a buried stump, and stopped. “‘Ay tank she not run,” said Ole sadly, as he shook himself out of the snow-drift into which he had been hurled. “Come on!’ commanded the doctor, and, seizing his cases, he bowed his head to the blast, and dived forward toward the beach. Ten minutes later, the doctor, breathless from the buffeting of the wind, staggered into the nearest cottage. The suffering man lay moaning feebly upon a cot, while the life-savers, their preparations completed, waited. “Is he alive?” the doctor panted. “Doc!” exclaimed a guard, “how did you get here? We telephoned only fifty- five minutes ago!” _ “Ole!” gasped the doctor. ‘‘He brought me. It seemed a month.” In fifteen minutes, his handsrestored from numbness by hot water and a hard massage, the doctor directed the giving of the anes- thetics. Inside an hour the amputation operation was completed, the other wounds dressed, and the patient, still unconscious, was carried to a cot in the next room. The doctor, exhausted, sank into a chair by the big stove. At that moment the door opened and Ole entered. “By gar!’ he said in a hoarse whisper. “Engine she ban all right. Pipe he broke and gas she run out.” He tiptoed heavily to the door of the ad- joining room and peeped in at the patient. Suddenly he removed his cap and stood, bareheaded, his lips moving in prayer. “By gar!’ he said slowly. ‘“‘She ban my brother, René.” COMmichoooks CO