Adventure Magazine Cover, August 18, 1921 — page 146: what you’re looking at

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

140 Now within fifty yards of the foot of a battered round tower Charlie had given in- structions to outspan. | _ “Must be nearly forty miles back to where we left the patch of tomatoes, eh, Piet?” he remarked. “Ja, baas, two day journey. We take three.” Curiously and inquisitively the white man wandered off among the ruins. At first he dodged round high walls and scram- bled over fallen walls, noting all the time that most of them had originally been of the crudest construction. Also that they ap- peared to have been built without any par- ticular plan or system. Then at the foot of the tower he hesi- tated. The tower was still fifty or sixty feet high, though the top was crumbled away. And still on the walls were patches of fancy stone-work quite different from and far superior to any of the rough, uncut wall lying wrecked in all directions. Scrambling over piles of d¢bris and through tangled masses of roots and rotting wood he reached the entrance to the tower; an entrance which had once been arched but now was filled with heaps of fallen stones. And over this loose stone he care- fully picked his way. Fairly inside the tower he halted and looked round him curiously. Looked and listened for any signs of danger. Golden- tailed and red-tailed lizards scurried back and forth“catching flies in the sun on the walls and on the masses of tumbled rock. Twice snakes wriggled away close to him as he had disturbed the particular stones under which they were hiding. And as he stood the sounds of creeping things in a dozen directions smote his ear. Wonderingly he moved slowly on, picking his foothold more thoughtfully. The tower apparently twisted twice round like the com- mencement of a maze; like the inside of a conch-shell. A network of thick spiders’ webs—webs which stuck to the clothes like glue and which were almost as strong as thread—tran from wall to wall till they seem- ed to form a dark curtain. None could have passed there for an age. With a stick he slashed down the netting of webs as he moved forward, but the webs stuck and immediately formed into a ragged strip, like a war-tattered flag. Stick after stick he used and threw away. For a full quarter of an hour he pushed on and twisted Adventure round, then the wall on his right ended in a straight vertical line and he knew that he had reached the center of the building. The masses of débris there were still greater than in the surrounding corridors. The tower must have originally been much higher than he had imagined. And through the crevices between the fallen rocks trees had forced their way up and made it im- possible te stand far enough away to look to the top of the walls. With great difficulty he worked his way round close under the walls and through the branches and few leaves of the trees tried to find the carving the diary had spoken of. But the roughness of the walls stopped any chance of seeing anything from below. The only way was to climb the stanchest tree and make his observations from aloft. And there at once he saw it. The face was chipped and made more hideous, the body was marked with holes and cracks, the arms were worn and had half-dropped away. But the feet—as if preserved by some peculiar means—the feet were perfect. Each foot possessed only two big toes. With a sickening sensation, a sinking feeling in his stomach, the white man jumpily hastened to the ground and hurried out. ‘Though sweating his head felt cold and clammy. For a moment in the open sunshine he trembled, then broke into a self- assuring forced laugh. “Tomorrow,” he said to his Cape-boy as he arrived back at his wagon, “I’m going to get that carving down. And I’m going to see what’s lving under that pile of stones.” “What carving, m7) baas?”’ “The same carving that that dead man saw fourteen years ago.” But the Cape-boy’s vellow face turned a dirty gray and he simply slowly shook his head. 34 A HYENA laughed far away in the 4) distance and the shrill cry of a yt night-bird seemed to mock back at him. Somewhere up in the labyrinth of shattered walls an owl hooted. A mile to the west the fireflies flitted and danced over a water-hole in the dry river and the bull-frogs croaked and barked. Occasicn- ally a faint splash told that something in the water was still hungry and busy on a hunt. Jt was night. The weird, weird African night. Charlie, with his knees bunched and his cComicboooks C©