Adventure Magazine Cover — page 184: what you’re looking at

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

174 wind filled the sail and carried it clear of the bar. Within the bar was deep water. Grasping the tiller, Abu Khalil. put the dhow on a steady course, and it went foam- ing away, not headed toward the beach but following a curve of the shore that prom- ised rapidly to bring them out of range of the cruiser’s guns. ““Hudha!’’ cried Miriam, who had also remained on board. She was standing up so that. she rose head and shoulders above the decking upon which Abu Khalil squatted. ‘They will be captured!’ she cried. “Look! <A cutter is coming from that warship!” Abu Khalil did not bother to turn his head. There was in his face the look of an oriental despot—sensual, tyrannical, over- whelming—the undisguised face of the bar- baric tyrant he hoped to be. He reached out his powerful arm and, passing it around Miriam’s neck, drew her face up to his and crushed her lips with his hungry kisses. Panting with horror, Miriam managed to twist herself free. “By Allah,” said Abu Khalil huskily, “of what avail is it for you to struggle? Be- hold! In the empire which I shall build, you will be my first conquest!” Another shell sent a geyser leaping above the sand-bar, and a yell went up from the marooned conspirators. Abu Khalil invol- untarily turned his head. Assuming that this was about the best opportunity that would offer, Cohusac rose from his hiding-place, and, swinging his staff with both hands, brought it down on the prospective sultan’s neck. Where Abu Khalil found bottom, he was up to his neck in clear water. From this lowly point he looked out upon the flooded world with an expression of bewilderment and injury. As if Allah considered that his Adventure degradation was not sufficiently pointed, he set a sting-ray under Abu Khalil, and Abu Khalil stepped upon it with his bare foot. The four-inch barb pierced his in- step. He screamed as the agony of the poison shot up his leg; but he could not bend over to seize his wounded leg, and he screamed only once for fear of drowning. Suffering all the tortures of the seven hells, he floundered toward the shallower water of the sand-bar where the marooned conspirators were waiting with a certain degree of satisfaction to receive him, hoping that he would arrive before the naval cutter put them under more complete physical restraint. Cohusac, who had drawn himself up hastily to the tiller which Abu Khalil had so unexpectedly relinquished, first assured himself that he could hold the dhow under way, then gave a long, appreciative look at the deposed monarch. Completely satisfied with the arrangement, he turned then to look down at Miriam, who had staggered back against a thwart and was sitting there with hands clasped, staring at the hunch- back with gratitude. All at once Cohusac realized that she must recognize him with- out his artificial adornment; and with a sense of shame he raised his hand to his chin. Behold a miracle! Cohusac’s face was covered with an unkempt growth! For three days before assuming his disguise he had refrained from shaving in order to make his artificial beard more secure upon his face. Two additional days without a, razor had completed the transformation. Being of a hirsute disposition, not even Cohusac’s most intimate friends would have recog- nized him in this disheveled cripple. “Bismillah!” said he gaily. ‘Mistress of hearts, I swear by the Beard! You will be landed safe in Djibouti! Behold, I recite the Fatha!”’ NOOK 1 O)