Argosy, Vol. 122, No. 1 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

THE ARGOSY | Vol. CXXIHI Gy. “The sters are setting and the caravan | Starts fer the dawn of Nothing. O make haste!” CHAPTER I. THE ROOF OF THE WORLD. HROUGH the dawn the figure of a Iman crept over the shore. . He moved slowly but with assur- ance, glancing up at rock spires and chasms picked out by the flooding light overhead. Almost concealed by the fog, his crawling body—the only thing stirring on the shore of the lake—resembled a powerful gnome emerging from a kind of misty inferno into the light. On a sandstone shelf, somewhat above the thinning fog, the man paused. He had been carrying a bright, metallic object. In the half light of the ledge, this was revealed as a telescope. Carefully, he extended the instrument, focusing it to his satisfaction, and placed it on a makeshift stand, fash- ioned ef small poplar branches. This stand had quite evidently been erected before now. In fact, it was so con- structed that the telescope, when resting upon it, could bear only on a single point. 1 Arcosy SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1920 Author of * Marching Sands,” “The Sunwise Turn,” ete. At present it pointed into the mist, where of water, merged in the shadowy pools along the shore line. The solitary watcher seated himself on a convenient stone and eyed the thinting wisps of fog silently. Miles behind. and above him the crimson dawn flooded gi- gantic snow peaks. Great spaces of red rock and black, of yellow soil and brown, stretched toward him. Rays of light glinted on gneiss, and changed the masses of pine~ forests from black to purple to dull green. No birds crossed the expanse of the sky; the sudden breaths of air that whipped down from the upper ravines, were cold. Autumn had touched Lake Issyuk Kul. The harbingers of frost were creeping dewn from the white ones, the snow sum- mits of the Kungei Altai Tagh—the sun- lighted 7 of the northern shore. But the telescope was trained on the acenbeess shore, still invisible in the mist. And the man was gazing steadily into the cComiclbooks.com