Adventure Magazine Cover — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

after him, and covered Demid with his long broadsword. On firm ground, under a net- work of trees a group of Cossacks were rounding up a dozen ponies. Demid mounted the first that was offered him, and placed Lali before him. “To saddles!’ he commanded, and as he spoke, beheld Togrukh and the old Cossack -in the center of a ring of Moslem swords- men on the slanting deck of the galley. The sergeant caught the voice of his leader over the uproar, and lifted his left hand. “Farewell, father. Tell—of Togrukh——”’ Demid started in his saddle and tightened his rein. Then, realising that he could not leave his men, who were now about him to go to the sergeant’s aid, he whirled his horse and trotted back into the shadows. Once he glanced back, at a shout from the Mos- lems and saw Togrukh’s head, the eyes still quivering, stuck upon a spear. ‘‘He had an order to hold the after-deck!”’ The thought tortured him, and he drove his spurs into the beast under him in silent fury. The Cossacks, accustomed to finding their way about in darkness seemed to clus- ter about him by instinct. One spurred forward to seek out an opening in the trees. The rest muttered satisfaction. They were ashore, at a heavy cost, but upon the earth again, with horses under them. NINE times in ten, a company of soldiers thoroughly thrashed and dispersed in strange country would have scattered helplessly through the forest. The cry, ‘““Each man for himself,’’ would have meant death for all at the hands of the Moslems. In fact the warriors from the corsair had kindled torches and were searching the wood in bands, expecting to hunt down the fugitives. On every hand, however, as the Turks advanced, the cries of beasts arose in the brush. The yelp of a jackal answered the whining snarl of a panther, and, more dis- tant than the rest, the howling of a wolf rose steadily. Here and there the thickets - ahead of the searchers were shaken by the rush of a four-footed animal. But no forest animals were there. The men from the Don were at home in timber, and this was their fashion of calling to each other. Single warriors joined together, cvaded the torches and made their way to Adventure the howling of the wolf, where Demid had assembled the nucleus of their band. By,,the time the animal calls had ceased, some score of men, half of them mounted, had gathered about their ataman in a clear- ing by a ruined farm, and Demid knew that no more were alive, to come. He satisfied himself that Lali was living and not much hurt, befere he handed over the girl to Michael, whom he had kept at his stirrup during the flight from the beach. Then he called the roll softly and discovered that two of the riders were Christian slaves from the galley—an Armenian and a Syrian who had found themselves horseflesh as promptly and skilfully as a Jew pouched ducats. These he ordered to give their mounts to Cossacks. Without troubling to learn if his men still had their weapons—a Cossack of the Don is separated from the skin of his body as easily as from his saber—Demid asked a question quietly. ‘Have we sword strokes for the —— who took Togrukh’s head?” ‘Aye, father,” spoke up the oldest of the Cossacks—he who wore two shirts and- was called Broad Breeches. ‘‘We have swora strokes and we are ready. Once our mothers bore us,”’ he added reflectively, and a trifle indistinctly, for his upper lip and some teeth had been shot away by an arrow. The dark line of the forest was kindled by oncoming torches, and the main party of the Moslems who had followed the trail of the horses came into sight, loud-voiced and flushed with slaying. They had put to death the unfortunate galley slaves who had decided to await their coming, and were reinforced by the liberated janizaries. The bowmen, eyes on the trail they were following, ran forward into the clearing, and halted at the sound of hoofs thudding toward them in the dark. They snatched up their bows and loosed arrows hastily, without secing clearly what was coming upon them. Rising in their stirrups and striking on each side, the Cossacks broke through the archers and wheeled about among the scat- tered groups. In the saddle and on open ground they were different men from the dogged crew that had been beaten from the galley, and so the Turks found them. Wherever a knot of swordsmen still stood together, Ayub galloped, his broadsword whistling over his head, and the massive blade cut into flesh and bone as a sycthe oO COMmicloo Sj CO