Adventure Magazine Cover, December 18, 1919 — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

54 Tt was not long, however, before the tor- - turing beat of the hoofs in an easy can- ter again teased his distress. The way was boulder-strewn. He kept stubbing his tages and stumbling, but that worried..him less than the strange behavior of the oasis, which one moment was alluringly near, almost be- fore him, but then faded into the misty horizon, now gone altogether. He re- membered the similar behavior of the baobab in the morning, so he forged steadily on. He knew nothing of mirages, had for- gotten in long years of smithing what the Fourth Reader had_said, so he had no saving suspicion of the trick. He did not know that the spectral imagery of the western Sudan is curiously repeti- tional in hour, place and tableau and that the palm vision was part of the cun- ning plot that put slaves’ yokes around the necks of aspirants to sunrise-to-sun- set domain. His mind had been prepared to expect an oasis and he had seen one. Anyway, he was too rattled at the taunts of the Kanuri and too set upon his determina- tion to include the oasis and turn the laugh on them, to nurse any doubts. One after another the taunting proverbs were bayed down from the horsemen. “Wisdom is not in the eye but in the head. A load on another’s back is easily: carried. What Allah hath decreed, that shall he see.”’ They roared with glee to see the white man sweating heart and blood and soul in following a delusion, his covetous- ness leading his neck into a slave’s yoke. How they roared when he stubbed his toe and fell flat on his face. “He prays to Allah. Nay, ‘tis not yet the hour of prayer... He need pray to Allah.” He choked the curses on his lips and _ stumbled on. E began to worry. The sun had gone behind:the mount. A_ giant shadow stole over the land, chilling, omi- nous. He could not see the oasis at all. Hestoppedand shaded his aching eyes with his hand. The palms had disappeared. There was some trick. - It was en- chantment. He recalled the strange things he had witnessed in crossing the _ »where he Adventure pagan belt—witchcraft, sorcery, obses- sion, atavism. Had not Issou peddled charms against evil magic, . exorcised wicked devils? Issou had bewitched him. That was the joke. There was no oasis; it was all in his own brain—a vision planted there by the minstrel. No one had ever dared to play a prac- tical joke on him, His brawn and ham fists had seen to that. It was a new ex- perience and it hit him hard. He turned on his scoffers, but rage quickly subsided into cold fear of the mountain’s shadow, the sun’s obscurity, the remoteness and invisibility of the ant-hill, the escarp- ment he had to climb. He looked up° into the solemn, amused black eyes, not in rage nor in entreaty, but with a pite- ous helplessness. After a few long mo- ments he started to retrace his steps. Yards seemed miles; little obstacles grew into tremendous obstructions ; boul- ders, easily stepped over in the freshness of his morning’s strength, he now had to go around. He reached the base of the bluff and flung himself at it, in his flurry-not paus- ing to scan it quietly for an easy place to climb. He panted up, clawing and toeing crevice and fissure, to a narrow ledge, stalled, unable to mount higher. His ascent was greeted with guttural derision. “He coveted sunrise-to-sunset domain and Allah hath given him a slave’s yoke. Ho,ho! Our shehu will have an armorer, yea, a Strong White Man Learned in the Magic of Metals will he have for armorer. He shall labor five years for his folly ; he will make us guns like the white man hath.” E He turned on them raging, his morale broken. He tried to curse them but his swollen tongue uttered no sound. A slave’s yoke! He, Tim Cole, white man, would bea slave toanigger. The horror steadied him. He shut his teeth, stood off from the bluff and searched its face, traced an upward passage and went at it with cold, grim determination. Awhile the Kanuri watched his efforts, saw he would make it, then cantered off to the place they had descended before. He worked up what geologists call a chimney,.the sweat and dust in his eyes, his loose burnoose catching and tearing. Spitting dust, gasping breaths, snorting, EOPMIGELOOO KS (E(0)