Adventure Magazine Cover — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

44 with various rug sellers and other slave traders, on the southern trail. Being merchants who disliked hardships, they camped that night on the near shore of a swift, blue river that Michael fancied to be the Chan or Jihan, once crossed by Xenophon and the Greeks. Being swollen by the melting snows its crossing was no easy feat, and the next morning the Turko- mans were forced to strip, to carry over the goods on their heads, while the slaves were set to work to build rafts. Michacl setting about his share of the task philosophically, the first to note a band of cloaked horsemen spurring up over the sands. The merchants shouted for the guards, but those who were in the river made haste to complete the crossing, and the few remaining, after a glance at the drawn simitars of |the Arab marauders, cast away their spears and sat down to watch events. So did the slaves. Several of the owners of the caravan offered fight, probably hoping to make better terms by a show of resistance. The raiders made no bones about riding them down, and Michael noticed that they cut the throat of the merchant who had bought him. In a few minutes the slaves who had been about to cross the Jihan were lined up and divided among the chiefs of the pillagers, together with the bales of cotton and furs. Camels were then brought up by grinning boys who signed for the prisoners to mount and accompany their new masters. A couple of the Turkomans were included by way of good measure, and Michael sus- pected that those who were left behind took advantage of the happening to plunder the remaining merchants. So began a strange chapter in the long wanderings of the Irishman, who, in the eyes of his captors, the Arabs, was no longer a living spirit, but a thing of flesh and muscles, to be sold for the best price it would bring. He noticed that the Arabs headed south- west, along the river and crossed lower down that same day, moving out before dawn toward a rocky range of hills where only one pass was visible. After laboring through the mud of this ravine, they made camp in a ruined khan—a traveler’s shelter in a plain green and pleasant with olive trees and pomegranates. Here again, the company divided after Adventure lengthy discussion, and an old Arab who looked what he was—a monarch of horse thieves—signed for Michael to come with him and a stripling who bristled with wea- pons as he tried to strut like the warriors. This was different from the mule cara- van. On a swift-gaited camel Michael sped along a beaten track with the desert riders, who circled the villages and headed toward a nest of minarets on the skyline. Studying their destination as it drew nearer, Michael made out the white sides of a castle rising on a height—the green of gardens showing over the walls and a loity tower over the gardens. Perhaps because the ground outside had been cleared of all brush and huts, he had never beheld walls sO massive as those which hemmed in the city of minarets and domes—a city gleaming white and yellow and purple under the utter blue of the sky. One of the thieves let fall a word that roused his curiosity at once— - Hales” Now Michael was almost sure that this was Aleppo, and the thought that he had come before the Cossacks to their destina- tion made him smile. Michael reasoned that the Cossacks would delay only a short while to search for him; learning nothing of his seizure, they would press on, playing as they were for a great stake. They might come into sight of the city about this time, and he cherished this flicker of hope. But, passing through the heavily guarded gate—Bab el Nasr, Gate of Victory it was called—on the north side of the town, and threading into the crowded passages be- tween the sheer walls of mosques and the dwellings of the nobles, he mentally in- creased the odds against Demid. Aleppo was full of Moslem soldiery. Moreover it was full of mosques, which meant throngs of armed worshippers, who indeed fired at him volleys of abuse, with more than a little mud and stones. The old Arab, however, was equal to the task of caring for his stock-in-trade. Giving back insult for insult he took the center of the alleys with his camel while his son brought up the rear with display of teeth and steel, until they gained the shelter of the caravanseral of the desert men near the slave market. Here space was procured for the three camels in the crowded lower court, and COMIC LOO S C©