Argosy, Vol. 122, No. 1 — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

40 ‘carefully rounded shaft, and lined with silk. ‘It went down for perhaps thirty feet or more, and there enlarged itself into a cham- ber where the owner and digger of the shaft mig: rest. The top of the hole was closed by a trap-door, stained with mud and earth to imitate with precision the surrounding soil. A keen eye would have been needed to perceive the opening. But a keen eye now peered out from a tiny crack, the eye of the engineer of the underground dwelling. (ight hairy legs surrounded the body of the creature that hung motionless at the top of the silk-lined shaft. A huge mis- ‘shapen globe formed its body, colored a dirty brown. ‘Two pairs of ferocious man- dibles stretched before its fierce mouth- parts. Two eyes glittered evilly in the dark- ness of the burrow. And over the whole body spread a rough, mangy fur. | It was a thing of implacable malignance, of incredible ferocity. It was the brown hunting-spider, the American tarantula (Mygale Hentziu). Its body was two feet and more in diameter, and its legs, out- stretched, would cover a circle three yards across. It watched Burl, its eyes glistening. Slaver welled up and dropped from its jaws. And Burl strutted forward on the edge of the cliff, puffed up with a sense of his “own importance. The white snare of the spinning spider below him impressed him -as amusing. He knew the spider would not leave its web to attack him. He reached down and broke off a bit of fungus growing at his feet. Where he broke it, it was ooz- - Ing a soupy liquid and was full of tiny mag- gots in a delirium of feasting, Burl flung it down into the web, and then laughed as the black bulk of the hidden spider swung down from its hiding-place to investigate. The tarantula, peering from its burrow, quivered with impatience. Burl drew near, and nearer. He was using his spear as a lever, now, and prying off bits of fungus to fall ‘down the cliffside into the colossal “web. The spider, below, went leisurely from one place to another, investigating each new missile with its palpi, then leaving them as they appeared lifeless and undesirable prey. Burl laughed again as a particularly large -lump of shelf-fungus narrowly missed the black-and-silver figure below. Then— THE ARGOSY. The trap-door fell into place with a faint click, and Burl whirled about. His laugh- ter turned to a scream. Moving toward him with incredible rapidity, the monster tarant- ula opened its dripping jaws. Its mandibles gaped wide. The poison fangs were un- sheathed. The creature was thirty paces away, twenty paces—ten. It leaped into the air, eyes glittering, all its eight legs ex- tended to seize, fangs bared— Burl screamed again, and thrust out his arms to ward off the impact of the leap. In his terror, his grasp upon his spear had become agonized. The spear-point shot out and the tarantula fell upon it. Nearly a quarter of the spear entered the body of the ferocious thing. It stuck upon the spear, writhing hor- ribly, still struggling to reach Burl, who was transfixed with horror. The mandibles clashed, strange sounds came from the beast. Then one of the attenuated, hairy legs rasped across Burl’s forearm. He gasped in ultimate fear and stepped backward— and the edge of the cliff gave way beneath him. He hurtled downward, still clutching the spear which held the writhing creature from him. Down threugh space, his eyes glassy with panic, the two creatures—the man and the giant tarantula—fell together. There was a strangely elastic crash and crackling. They had fallen into the web beneath them. Burl had reached the end of terror. He could be no more fear-struck. Struggling madly in the gummy coils of an immense web, which ever bound him more tightly, with a wounded creature shuddering in ageny not a yard from him—yet a wounded creature that still strove to reach him with its poison fangs—Burl had reached the limit of panic. He fought like a madman to break the ‘coils about him. His arms and breast were ‘greasy from the oily fish, and the sticky web did not adhere to them, but his legs and body were inextricably fastened by the elastic threads spread for just such prey as he. He paused a moment, in exhaustion. Then he saw, five yards away, the silvery and black monster waiting patiently for him cComiclbooks.com