Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 102: what you’re looking at

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

+a skeleton hand! 476 beat about us, blackening the sight with agony! We pressed, the three of us, against the side of the pony, burying our faces in its shaggy coat, striving to hide our eyes from the radiance which, strain closely as we might, seemed to pierce through the body of the little beast, | through our own heads, searing the sight! CHAPTER XVIII. “WITCH! GIVE BACK MY SISTER.” OW long we were within that giare I do not know; it seemed unending hours; it was of course only min- utes—-seconds, perhaps. After aeons of — pain, I was sensible of a permeating shadow, a darkness gentle and healing. I raised my head, opened my eyes. We were moving tranquilly, slowly — with a curious suggestion of homing leisureliness —through a soft, blue shimmering dark- ness! It was as though we were drifting ' within some high borderland of light; a region in which that rapid vibration we call the violet was mingled with, mated to, a still more rapid vibration whose quick pul- sing was felt by the brain but ever fled ere that brain could register it in terms of color. And there seemed to be a film over my sight; dazzlement from the unearthly blaze, I thought, shaking my head impa- tiently. } My eyes focused upon an object a little more than a foot away; my neck grew rigid, my scalp prickled while I stared, un- believing. And that at which I stared was Every*bone a grayish black, sharply silhouetted, clean as some master surgeon’s specimen, it was extended as though clutching at—clutching at— what was that toward which it was reach- ing? Again the icy prickling over scalp and skin—for its talons stretched out to grasp a steed that Death himself might have rid- den, a rack whose bare skull hung droop- ing upon bent vertebrae! I raised my hands to my face to shut out the ghostly sight—and swiftly the clutching bony hand moved toward me—was before my eyes— touched me! . ,ARGOSY- ALLSTORY WEEKLY. The involuntary cry that sheer horror wrested from me was strangled by swift realization. And so acute was my relief, so reassuring was it to have in the midst of these mysteries some sane, understand- able thing occur that I laughed aloud. For the skeleton hand was my own! The mournful, ghastly mount of death was— our pony! And when I looked again I knew what I would see—and see them I did —two tall skeletons, skulls resting on their bony arms, leaning against the frame of the beast. | While ahead of us, floating poised upon the surface of the glistening cube, two wo- men skeletons—Ruth and Norhala! Weird enough was the sight, Diirer- esque, grimly awful as materialization ‘of a scene of the Dance Micabre—and yet —vastly comforting! For we had suffered no sea change in our plunge into that poo! of: living incandescence. _ Here was something which was well within the range of human knowledge. It was the light about us that did it; a vi-- bration that, even as I had conjectured, was within the only partly explored region of the ultra-violet and the unexplored re- gion above it; the home of the Roentgen ray and those other radiant phenomena akin to it. Yet there were differences, for there was none of that misty halo around the bones seen always with the X-rays, the flesh which even they cannot render wholly in- visible. The skeletons stood out clean cut, with no trace of fleshly vestments. I crept over, spoke to the two. “ Don’t look up yet,” I said. “ Don't open your eyes. We're going through a queer light. It has an X-ray quality. You're going to see me as a skeleton—” ’ “What?” shouted Drake. ‘Disobeying my warning he straightened, glared at me. And disquieting as the spectacle had been before, fully understanding it as I did, I could not restrain the shudder that went through me at the utter weirdness of that skull which was his head thrusting itself toward me, its bony sockets filled with shining -vapors that I knew were his eyes! The skeleton that was Ventnor turned to me; was arrested by the sight of the flitting ecoMmniclacoalks Colin