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

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

68 and in it, carefully displayed, was a long Turkish pistol with gold-inlaid hilt. Four out of the Don men, decked out in all the finery they could lay hand on, trotted in line after the young sergeant, showing off the steps of the blooded Kabarda mounts. When the staring Za- poroghians pressed too close they thrust out with their stirrups, and bade the onlookers yield place to the Donskot who had been on a visit to Aleppo. “Eh, they are tricked out like pashas, the dogs!’ muttered the colonel who had spoken of garments. Four more of the riders escorted a bullock cart laden with heavy leather sacks. But ten thousand pairs of eyes passed over the cart to focus with astonished admiration on Ayub. The giant ataman had robed himself that morning for the Siech. His kalpack was white ermine, bordered with gold braid; a purple cloak of damask embroidered with peacock-feathers hung from his broad shoulders; instead of the long Cassack coat he had on a Turkish robe of honor, of the sheerest silvered cloth, studded with pearls. Diamonds gleamed from the armlets that held in place his wide sleeves. “His trousers!” cried a stranger to the Siech. “Only look at his pantaloons!” Ayub stroked his mustache, delighted with the attention given him. Instead of the usual Cossack attire, he wore a pair of silk bag-trousers, as wide as sails, and the purest yellow in hue. ' Behind the cart Demid and Michael rode into the ring of the rada almost unnoticed. Only eleven had come back, of the thirty- four that had set out. The new priest saluted Ayub gravely, taking him for the leader of the band. “You have come from a hard road, my son—surely the bandura players and the minstrels will sing of your deeds this night.” He did not know the man he addressed. “Why do you talk to me of minstrels, batko? As the saints are dear to me, I have as good a tongue as their’s, and I do not need any fiddles or lutes to give it tone. Come, brothers, a cup of vodka, now—l tasted the pasha’s sherbet in Aleppo, but he had no vodka.” Some one gave him a cup and he poured it down his throat deftly. “Not bad!” He rose in his stirrups and lifted his voice. Adventure ‘“‘Noble ‘sirs, it is not modest in a man to relate all his deeds, so I will only touch on afew. When you wish to knew how to capture the Sultan’s navy, I can put a word or two in your ears, where at present there are only fleas. And as for capturing such cities as Aleppo with walls as high as the tallest pines—why I and Demid and the little cockerel of a Frank do not bother our heads about such trifles any more.” The throng pressed nearer and Ayub’s old comrades began ‘to grin and nudge each other. “T could tell you how it feels to fight night vampires and ghosts in a Turkish burial ground, or to change the heart of a witch ok | “Enough!” broke in Demid coldly. “or to row in an open skiff across the Black Sea, when the waves were like the slopes of the Caucasus; but you, sir brothers, only want ‘to scratch the backs of your heads that itch from too much lying down.” “May the dogs bite you!’ howled an angry warrior. “How did you get away from the Greeks, off Trebizond?”’ “Flow did we do ‘that? Easily—it was nothing at all. When dusk fell the little Frank bade us light two-score slow matches that we still had with us for the arque- buses. As I live, we had no fire-locks any more, but the Greeks, counted the burning matches and sheered ‘off, thinking we were in force. After that we landed, and it is the truth that we passed under the moun- tain where the blessed ark landed when God flooded the world.* Aye, we climbed moun- tains—such mountains! The fiend himself could not have flown over them. Then we mauled the Tatars a bit on their steppe and cut down a hundred or so, because we wanted their horses. But as to that, every one in the world knows except you, dog brothers, who are swimming in fat because you have eaten in kitchens so long. I will say only that .I—and Demid and Ser Mikhail—have here a million sequins as ransom for the Roshevor Rurik.”’ “Rurik is no longer koshevot,” one of the Cossacks. ‘““How, no longer?” “Because the Turks have cut his head open and sliced his heart and salted him down, so that he is no longer alive.” observed *Probably Ayub stretched matters here, but Ararat is vissible from a long distance ‘to ‘the north. oO COmiclboook (©