Avon Fantasy Reader No. 14 — page 7: what you’re looking at

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

give us a sporting chance of reaching the coast.’ ‘Listen!’ he raised his hand. Out across the bush-country threbbed again that haunting whisper. ‘We'll go on. Pll never rest until I know what makes that sound. I never heard anything like it in the world before’ “"The jungle will pick our bally bones,’ I said. He shook his head. ““Listen! said he. “Te was hike a call. It got into your blood. It drew you as a fakir’s music draws a cobra. | knew it was madness. But I dida’t argue. We cached most ot our duffle and started on. Each night we built a thorn boma and sat inside it while the big cats yowled and grunted outside. And ever clearer as we worked deeper and deeper in the jungle mazes, we heard that voice. It was deep, mellow, musical. It made you dream strange things; it was pregnant with vast age. The lost glories of antiquity whispered in its blooming. It centered in its resonance all the yearning and mystery of life; all the mayic soul of the East. I awoke in the middle of night to listen to its whispering echoes, and slept to dream of sky-towering minarets, of long ranks of bowing, brown-skinned worshippers, of purple-canopied peacock thrones and thunder- ing golden chariots. “Conrad had found something at last that rivalled his infernal bugs in his interest. He didn’t talk much; he hunted insects in an absent-minded way. All day he would seem to be in an attitude of listening, and when the deep golden notes would roll out across the jungle, he would tense like a hunting dog on the scent, while into his eyes would steal a look strange for a civilized professor. By Jove, it’s curious to see some ancient primal influence steal through the vencer of a cold-blooded scientist’s soul and touch the red flow of life beneath! It was new and strange to Conrad; here was something he couldn't explain away with his new-fangled, bloodless psychology. “Well, we wandered on in that mad search—for it’s the white man’s curse to go into Hcll to satisfy his curiosity. Then in the gray light of an early dawn the camp was rushed. There was no fight. We were simply flooded and sub- merged by numbers, They must have stolen un and surrounded us on all sides; for the first thing I knew, the camp was full of fantastic figures and there were half a dozen spears at my throat. It rasped me terribly to give up without a shot fired, but there was no bettering it, and I cursed myself for not having kept a better lookout. We should have expected something of the kind, with that devilish chiming in the south. “There were at least a hundred of them, and I got a chill when I looked at them closely. They weren’t black boys and they weren’t Arabs. They were lean men of middle height, Jight yellowish, with dark eyes and big noses. They wore no beards and their heads were close-shaven. They were clad in a sort of tunic, belted at the waist with a wide leather girdle, and sandals. They also wore a queer kind of iron helmet, peaked at the top, open in front and coming down nearly to their shoulders behind and at the sides. They carricd big metal-braced shields, nearly square and were armed with narrow-bladed spears, strangely made bows and arrows, and short straight swords as I had never seen before—or since. “They bound Conrad and me hand and foot and they butchered Selim 5 comicbooks. com