Adventure Magazine Cover — page 117: what you’re looking at

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

_ Ivory RESTING occasionally—for the big fellow was weakening—he made straight for the rock, and when but a hundred yards from it broke into a ludi- crous attempt at a charge. “Well, I’m jiggered,” said the Major as he breathlessly seated himself on a boulder. “Have I come all this way just to see the bally blighter commit hara-kiri by dashing his bloomin’ brains out on a rock?” He bent down to loosen his legging and was occupied with a balky buckle when a shout of amazement from Jim made him quickly look up. The elephant had vanished. “Where did he go, Jim?” “T don’t know, baas. Straight to the rock he went and it opened and swallowed him up. Let us go; this is a place of evil.”’ “Nonsense, Jim. He must have doubled on his tracks somewhere—or perhaps he’s down behind a big boulder.”’ “‘Tkona, baas! With my own eyes I saw it. ‘To the rock he went and then I saw him no more. Not once have my eyes left the place he entered.” And indeed Jim’s eyes stared fixedly ahead of him, hypnotized by fear of the un- known. “Deuced funny,” quoth the Major. “Come, Jim. Let’s go and look at this rock that swallows elephants alive.’ Jim refused to budge and the Major, knowing the folly of trying to argue with a - superstitious native, walked alone up to the rock, He followed closely the path taken by the elephant; then at the place where it had spurred up its courage to a game attempt of a charge he stopped short. He walked a little way to the left; back again; then to the right; back again; and stopped. “Come here, Jim,” he shouted gleefully. “Nay, baas. It is a place of evil.” “Thou speakest folly,” he cried in the ver- nacular. ‘Come here.” Jim tremblingly obeyed. Great as was his fear of the spirits, his fear of the Major’s wrath was even greater. When the Major commanded in that tone Jim, spirits or no spirits, obeyed. “Look, Jim. What do you see?” The Major pointed to the rock. Jim looked fearfully as if expecting to see the souls of the Wicked One awaiting him. But seeing to what the Major pene he grinned foolishly. 107 “Tt is an opening in the rock, daas.”’ “Yes. It’s the opening that swallowed up the elephant, and this is the only place from. which it is visible. Come on.’ The Major was excited, and as he ran to the opening he shouted like a boy released from school. On reaching the cleft in the reck he sobered down. “Bai Jove! feelin’. ing mortals who’ve been here.” “Vah, baas,” agreed Jim. “Tt must have been a tight fit for _ old fellow,” said the Major as he and Jim passed into the cleft. This they now saw was a deep ravine, as if the rock had been split by an earthquake. Though the entrance to it was, as the Major said, narrow, it at once widened and was all of twelve feet in width. The sides of the ra- vine, however, converged as they neared the top, and in some places actually touched. Turning and twisting as the ravine did, . they did not come in full view of the ele- phant—though at times they heard his shrill trumpeting—until half an hour later, when they emerged, as Jim put it, “from the belly of the earth.”’ Then they saw the bull leaning against a big rock, his breath coming and going in big choking gasps But their attention was held elsewhere. Before them, a sheer drop of twenty feet or more, was a small valley enclosed on all sides by the queer rock formation; a valley devoid of vegetation save round the edges where grew luxuriant vines and here and there, like , sentinels, giant baobab-trees. All was deadly calm. No living thing seemed to have its habitation there, and scattered on the ground in endless were the skeletons of elephants—hundreds of them. “They’ve been coming here to die,” mused the Major, “since the birth of the world. It’s majestic.”’ He doffed his helmet, as one.in the pres- ence of honored dead. “Watch the bull, baas,” whispered Jim. The big fellow was slowly collecting his strength. Gradually he righted his big bulk until finally, disregarding the torture to his wounded leg, he stood on all four feet. Then began the dance of the elephant, that monotonous lifting of the feet and the swaying of the big body. IcCOMICHDOO pofunion It’s a decidedly speoky Just think, Jim, we’re the only liv- _ (E@)