A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 35: what you’re looking at

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

oa we — a a te NF Oe. = - = az ““% “e « ‘ eee * . THE SMOKING LAND 35 hour to get my stuff together, the canvas over the sled, and myself and Murder in it, before the island began to heel more and more rapidly. I pushed off, and suddenly the whole mass, as though waiting for that signal, turned bottom up. I heard the upper part of the berg smite the water on the other side with a tre- mendous crashing, and in the meantime, not a yard from my boat, the bottom ice slid upward, endlessly, eenGoEhs blue as though oiled, shining like the belly of a great fish. And with its movement, it cast out shuddering waves, like those which wrig- gle out from the side of a great liner. Those waves pushed me back to a safer distance. And now I sat in the sled-boat and looked gloomily back at my happy home—upside down! Tt sounds funny to say it, but it was not funny, at that moment. It was damned dis- mal, and there was not a solitary gleam of ice in any direction through that close, gray day, and the sea was choppy, tossing my feather of a boat about, and tossing in a gallon or so of water, now and then. And Murder? He sat in the center of the boat, with his head pointing true as any compass needle a little west of north! Yes, I knew then, and I had guessed it before, that Murder. had an instinct as sure as that of a bird winging home! What a magnificent dog! I had a bright idea after a time. Al- though my island had turned over, it was still an island, though a smaller one. So I sunply hauled to the leeward of it, and found a place where; the ‘cliff could be scaled, and landed again. Sports e Adventure Love e Detective Science e Fantasy guiue to good reading always! POPULAR DEMAND — DEMANDS POPULAR Whatever you demand of your reading, there's an answer to it in the more than 20,000,000 words published annually under this seal— Watch for this Populat Fiction Group seal on every magazine you buy. It is your one sure T WAS not as comfortable as before, for the surface was sheer ice; whereas previously I had had a hard blanket of snow underfoot. However, the berg sailed on, upside down, and bore me eventually into a white hell, where all the devils were howling and smashing a crystal world about each other’s. ears. I mean, it brought me into a great ice jam. I did about ten miles in ten days, going through that grinding inferno. And then it split away beneath me; and I drove for days in a terrible gale that kept me drenched with spray and put in my ears a worse sound than the loon-laughter of that half-witted Esquimau! That was in the eighth month of my journey. I think that I had given up any real hope about three or four months before, and the only thing that kept me going, paddling north through the iron-gray, icy water, or trekking overland with the might of Murder hauling at the traces, was a blind determination born out of the very years which I had already devoted to the quest. For long invested time is in it- self a sort of capital which pays you an interest, after a while, and keeps your hands at your work. But on this day, I made sure that I was passing to the end of the world and of my life, too, for the gale blew me from the southward towards a low-flying cloud. It was darker below, and lighter above. And suddenly even the nerve of Murder seemed to have deserted him, for he sat down and howled like the fiend that he was. Was it this that cleared my tired eyes for me, and made me look again? At any West Mystery Railroading Sets,