Adventure Magazine Cover, December 18, 1919 — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

5 The Shehu Wants an Armorer over the plateau and eye-mapped his day’s route. A gigantic lone baobab that broke the empty expanse to the south he marked for his half-way rest—his noon shade. Then he would swing in a half- circle round to the west, to a rock that rose abruptly from the plain. He made mental note that he must be careful not to be caught behind that near sundown, for then his view of the ant-hill would ® be blocked and his direction lost in the broken country. He thought of Issou’s warning: “If the heart’s desire and the eye’s vision were no greater than the strength there would be no failures.” Yes, he must not bite off more than he could chew. Still, it would be his own lookout if he mapped more than he could cover. If a prideful determination to show his scoffers what a white man could stride in a day fooled him into omitting’ a cau- tionary allowance for unforeseen delays, for diminishing strength and sun-glare, it was not because Tim did not con- sider these things, nor because he mapped in the buoyancy of the morning’s strength anid optimism and allowed no margin for the high visibility of twilight. Then where was the joke? He tried to read it in the solemn, amused eyes of the horsemen, but the only result was a fretful irritation at their appearance—mounted scarecrows in voluminous burnooses casting dis- torted and gigantic shadows before the saffron fires in the east that heralded the coming of the sun. He looked at the troubadour and a sudden memory flashed through his mind. He thought he had pricked the joke. Where was the date oasis by the wells of which the minstrel had sung so alluringly? He flung the question at Issou. Issou lifted a troubled glance and re- plied: “Can then the eye’s vision encompass man’s covetousness? Will not “Allah grant thee vision of the oasis?” , He said it sadly, as one intoning a for- ‘mula, as if, in fact, he had said it many, many times before to other aspirants. Hitherto he had made it a prayer that Allah grant the smith the vision of the oasis. Now he put it in the form of a question, as if he were side-tracking re- sponsibility. Whatever his aim, the Ka- hill. nuri took up his reply with echoing laughter. “Oh, Allah will grant the white man vision of the date oasis,” they guffawed, rocking in their saddles with mirth, but as Tim’s fingérs twitched convulsively — at imaginary black throats their laughter suddenly ceased and they flung out of saddles in prayerful attitude to the ball” of fire that was rising over the far rim of the world. | T -was the signal for the day’s race. Tim waited the full rounding of the orb, then leaped down the ant-hill and swung off in a loose-jointed, free, steady gait to throated “Allah il Allah!’ A while he walked along, the soft pad of shoeless horses trailing him. He gave one glance behind; saw Issou seated on the ant-hill, resolved to sit there all day and wait the outcome, no doubt; swept the mocking eyes of the Kanuri and then resolved to shut them out of his mind, to spare all emotion and turn himself into a walking-machine. The resolution would not hold; in spite of his will he found himself wishing he had them alone, one at a time, with nothing be- tween their jaws and his fists but what defense they could put up with unscien- tific boxing hands. He marched doggedly. . The sun con- tracted to dinner-plate size, slowly, crawl- ing up an empty sky. He begamto think too much about the sun, to dream of cloud-veiled skies. The rain gulleys proved deeper and wider than had appeared from the ant- The smith could not always jump them, but had to slide down crumbly clay, often a hundred feet or more, then laboriously struggle up the other side, up loose, caking clay that offered neither foothold nor finger-clutch. He tried climbing crabwise, leaning his weight to the bluff, grabbing at thorny cacti which tore his hands and pulled away under his weight, tumbling him in giddy spins to the bottom. The derisive laughter of the Kanuri who took the gaps.in easy leaps and waited above him, comfortable in their~ high-pommeled saddles, mad- dened him as they called down teasing proverbs. Se “A man there was who asked Allah for the world. Allah gave him his covet- GComicbooks (E@)