Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

8 Adventure of the other’s surprize and wrath, “is ill favored and shrewish. She hath over- passed thirty years and dotes on Philip, who is yet willing to have her for his bride. I see no hindrance to the match.” “But the men of England—Parliament ” “Will not take kindly at first to a nobler monarch than the Tudor lineage can show. But Mary will have her way, and you of the court have gone too far to draw back, unless you would care to make your excuses to the Fox.” “Tis the fable of Master AXsop come true,” grunted Durforth, who cared little about matters of state,.so he was permitted to trade as he listed. ‘The gentry who were weary of King Log called for King Stork and had sorrow thereby.” “Por estas honradas barbas!” cried D’Alaber, drawing himself up in his first flash of temper. ‘You rovers* and cloth pediers have no wit to see where power lies. Philip will be monarch of Spain before many years.” He swept his hand about the bare rush- floored chamber of his host. “Instead of on this filth, you will walk on the carpets of Araby and these foul walls will be covered with the silks of Cathay. Your table will bear its spices, which now it lacks. For—” his eloquent voice rang with the arrogance of one schooled in a militant and conquering court—‘‘you will be allied to the master of Christiandom, to Charles, Emperor of.the Romans, King of Spain, Germany and the Two Sicilies. Lord of Jerusalem and Hungary, Archduke of Austria, and Duke of Burgundy and Brabant, Earl of Flanders, and——” One finger, bearing rings set with flaw- less, blue diamonds, tapped the table be- fore the stricken nobleman. “‘_and sole monarch of the New World, with all its riches.” His words, sinking into the spirit of my lord of Stratford, left the man silent, sucking in his thin lips. D’Alaber, who had dealt with defeated noblemen before now, glanced at him as a physician might study a patient in convalescence and took Durforth’s arm. “Sir, I leave you to the meditations of prudence and I count upon your pledged aid. Send post to Orfordnesse if Edward nears the end, and so—fare you well.” *The Spaniards and Portuguese were supreme on the high seas in this age and called shipmasters of all other nations rovers. But Stratford was voiceless, beholding in the eyes of his imagination the chains that were to be put upon him, no less bind- ing for that they were of gold. D’Alaber shrugged and whispered Dur- forth. _ “Our islander hath served his turn, but for you sehor we have a worthy commis- sion.” ‘And a mort of danger.” “Ah, true. Have you put upon your ship the globe prepared by us.”’ ‘That I have, and a fine piece it is, bear- ing a mappamundi of all the known world.” ‘Use it. You know the course you are to sail, and what is to befall in the Ice Sea?”’ Durforth nodded and smiled. ‘°Twill be a merry company gathered at our setting forth. Nay, how will you keep this lad of Edward’s from spying upon us? Had you forgotten him?” Passing by the long mirror D’Alaber paused to adjust the clasp of his cloak. ‘‘Memory is a good servant but a poor mistress. “Tis my part to remember this unfortunate youth, yours to forget him. Study your part, Durforth, and remember that many an actor hath fallen foul of the pit by mistaking his cue.” CHAPTER III A HAWK Is SLAIN ALPH THORNE had been born, his comrades said, with a lucky hood on his head. Which was indeed only another way of saying that the boy managed to accomplish what he set out to do. His father, a merchant, was too wrapped up in the mystery of cosmography to thrive at barter and trade. The goods of the Thornes and then the ships and finally the manor in Suffolk had gone into the hands of those who had sharper wits. Left to his own devices by a father who pored over globe and chart, for years young Thorne kept apart from other boys, who, after the fashion of children, made mock of him for his father’s oddities, calling him the brat of the ‘‘Mad Cosmographer.” He trained hawks, built bird houses in the oaks behind the Orfordnesse cottage, and ran with his dogs when the nights were clear. Something of woodcraft he learned; he COnNICLaOe (©