Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 58: what you’re looking at

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

40 will harden in you, if you go not abroad in warmer garments than those. La, sir, such things may do well enough in London town, but not upon the Ice Sea. I will beg furs of good Tuon and sew ye a proper mantle.” “You need not, and—I am not angry, child.” “Child, quoth’a! You are a large lout for your age, Master Thorne, but you are not old enough to call me child. Nay, I think you very young.” So saying she beckoned him to a spot where the wind was warded by a great rock and, when he came reluctantly, sat close to afford him the warmth of her furs. “Peter says that you were a gentleman at court. Is it true?” Thorne found the girl difficult to under- stand; her gaze, as searching and guileless as a child was more disconcerting than the eyes, the bright and calculating eyes, of the ladies in waiting, for whom he had had a boyish awe. “T can break me a lance in the tourna- ments, and keep the saddle of a horse,’’ he admitted. “I can train a goshawk for hare or wild fowl.” “What else?” “T have killed several in fair fight with sword and dagger.” “Any lout can do as much, if luck be with him. What else?” “Why, I can put a shaft from a crossbow through the ribs of a running hart at a hundred paces.” Mistress Joan smiled behind the fur col- lar of her jacket. She had seen Thorne fail to do just that not so long ago, but she did not remind him of it. Instead her mood changed swiftly. “Now, sirrah, tell me this: Was it courteous in you to run off and leave me beleaguered by the drunken Easterlings? They are near mad, with the spirits they have taken.” ‘“‘Are they so?” Thorne frowned, thinking too late of the brandy and beer. Tuon and his men had seemed little inclined to try these strange drinks, but now apparently they had done so, and the result was not pleasant to contemplate. The fault being his, he was loath to admit it. “T knew it not, Mistress Joan. *Swounds, I grew weary of your following. A man Adventure may not think aright with a vixen’s tongue gcing like a bell clapper at his ear.” The corners of her lips drew down, and she moved a little farther away. “So my father used to say, when things went ill. Nay, Master Thorne, I followed you because I feared for—” she hesitated with an upward glance that judged his mood shrewdly—‘“I feared to be left by myself in the company of the Easterlings, and— and I am lonely, by times.” “In that case,” assented young Master Thorne gravely, “you may walk with me as often as you are minded, aye and talk also.” Around the corner of the rock Peter, the boatswain, hove in sight, his head bent against the wind. “Stand by, Master Ralph,” he muttered hoarsely, ‘‘stand by to go about. Luck sets our way.” Pe | THORNE motioned to the shipman Ss to join them, saying that they owed fae W their lives to Mistress Joan and it would be iil repayment of her courtesy to talk apart. At this Peter pursed his lips and was heard to growl that there was no knowing whether the maid was friend or unfriend, and for his part he would liefer keep his distance from one who ran about with Easterlings and dressed like a lad—a mortal sin tc his thinking. “The beer is gone,” he vouchsafed darkly, “ah, and the brandy. “Twill be a dry win- ter for us.” “Gone?” cried Joan Andrews. ‘Then the Laps have guzzled it.” “As ever was. They drained the casks and now lie about the hcuse like fish out 0’ water. Fuddled!” , He winked at Thorne and contorted his face in the effort to convey some hidden meaning unperceived by the girl. “Scuppers awash! They screamed and danced and fit among themselves. You could stow them in the fire and they would not stir—all twenty of them.” And he touched his dirk on the side away from Joan, beckoning with his head to his companion. “Stir a leg, Master Ralph. Blast my eyes but here’s luck a-playing our game, an 3) He lifted a huge hand to his lips and mouthed in Thorne’s ears. COnniclaoolk (©