Adventure Magazine Cover, December 18, 1919 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

56 Adventure seemed to be jerked from their sockets, his body to weigh a ton on the awful pull. Then his feet dragged the earth, but on the ant-hill side of the gap. The fright- ened horse plunged and dragged him within a few feet ofthe hill; then his hands let go and his knee-caps and fore- head came into violent concussion with the earth. The color grotesques. burned in his brain. He lay there stupefied. Presently he raised up on his stinging elbows, then on his palms, and thus hung, staring dully at the ant-hill, so near, if only he could make the effort; but the will to strive was with him no more. He felt the chilling breaths of sundown. He stared vacantly at the hill, trying to grasp its significance. Slowly into his confusion dawned the figure seated there—the little old trouba- dour, his friend of the trails, the friend who had betrayed him. That betrayal stood out bigger than anything else; it dimmed the failure to achieve the domain, to put the laugh on his scoffers, to escape the slave’s yoke—-dimmed them into a kind of torpid fatalism. Huis friend had betrayed him. He could not understand it and, propped there on his hands, he asked of the cunning, sun-puckered eyes a dumb, pathetic question. Issou rose. The cunning died out of his old eyes which seemed to shrink be- hind their wrinkled lids and cower from the gaze of the stricken giant. All the long day he had been beset by the rival forces of friendship and patriotism. In the beginning, back there in the vil- lage by the bridge, it had been glorious plotting to lure the White Man Learned in the Magic of Metals to N’dele and thus secure to the shehu and the Kanuri the wonderful smithery of the whites. He had not foreseen friendship with the victim, that big simplicity and trust of the smith’s that had lodged him in Issou’s heart. All day he had swung between patriot- ism and friendship and then had seen Tim stagger out of the heat, the dust, the glare, dragging his legs after him, sun- blinded, derided by the Kanufi, the pa- thetic victim of his own credulity and cupidity—and of Issou’s treachery. It had not seemed treachery when he had plotted it, but the white man had been as a child in his trust—a-son in his care of Issou. Issou was very, very old. There were few live coals left in his cindered passions—little left but the steady fire of patriotism for the greatness of N’dele and the triumph of the faithful. Since the Pagan Belt, however, the white man had been a son to him, his young strength the old man’s staff. Issou's heart was sorely troubled. He had not thought much about the slave’s yoke when plotting the trick, Domestic slavery in the Sudan is lenient—slavery in name only, and often the first rung in the ladder to emirships and shehuships. He had seen something of the smith’s pride, however, as he watched the giant stagger to the edge of the gulley, had seen and sorrowed for the smith’s agony of helplessness there and then—how his heart had leaped within him—Tim’s des- perate crossing. Now his friend hung there on his knees and hands, looking at him, not in censure, but in pained be- wilderment at his abuse_of their friend- ship. Issou trembled in his burnoose. He moved his eyes to the sun, a quarter- sphere on the horizon, then his gaze was drawn back to the smith and held there. A few more minutes and the shehu would have a White Man Learned in the Magic of Metals for armorer, to the glory of the Kanuri and the greatness of N’dele. It was the big dream realized, yet— The giant hung there piteous in his helplessness, pathetic in his feeling of abused trust. Issou trembled. He was old, very old, and decision was hard to reach. Then suddenly the miracle happened and friendship won. He stepped toward Tim, grasped his two hands from the earth and pulled him to the hill. The sun sank its upper thin rim of gold over the edge of the world. The Kanuri planted a peeled wand on the hill, the only wand there, and then rode solemnly off to N’dele, their black heads together, for Issou was madli— a holy man and wise—so they knew not what to make of his cheating the shehu of his armorer. SSOU bathed the smith’s face, washed out the grit from his eyes, rubbed his aching limbs, then piled brush and bedded COMMICIIOOLKS — €O \ A es a a a ies i? = ee