Adventure Magazine Cover — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

. Buried Gods 9 Nairobi going to Kisumu to start for the Eldama Ravine would be open to sus- picion, and the Government officials had quite as much dislike for the eccentric doc- . tor as he had for them. Anyway, he said, there was no particular hurry. The doctor, as leader of the expedition forbade any elephant-shooting. However a week out, fate, through the medium of Mahomet, decided that Dorsay’s thirst should be slaked. Mahomet, now cook, who had at one time been a syce and seemingly nourished an ambition to be a shikari, expressed in constant appeals to be allowed to accompany them upon their hunt for buck. One afternoon in a district where elephant were exceedingly plentiful the doctor and his Wondorobo hunter and Dorsay and the shikari set out as usual. About a mile from camp when they were walking through open forest country about a hundred yards apart there came suddenly the report of a rifle followed by the trumpet- ing of an elephant near to Dorsay. Wondering from whom the shot could possibly have come, he ran in the direction. As he rounded a great clump of trees he saw in an open glade fifty feet in front of him a slight figure-in khaki fleeing madly just ahead of a charging elephant. Vaguely recollecting instructions, he aimed at the base of the uplifted trunk and fired. As the great beast swerved aside, trum- peting ferociously, Mahomet had the sense to dart away to the right into thick bush. Standing in the middle of the open glade, the elephant winded Dorsay and charged. As the brute seemed towering above him, Dorsay fired, realizing to his dismay that he had aimed at the mighty chest instead of the brain through the mouth. He was seized and dashed to the ground. The elephant appeared to be falling upon him. He felt the contracting of the stom- ach muscle in horror of the coming impact, and wriggled. The wriggle and his slender- ness saved his life, for the tusks passed on either side of his body. Then, possibly thinking that he had slain his enemy, the elephant rose, and picking up the body, cast it into a bush. Stunned by the fall, Dorsay lay on his back, staring at the treetops. Then, the excitement spurring him, he scrambled to his feet and ran through the bush in time to see his quarry, who was leaning against a tree, sink on to the earth. : His second shot had passed through the joint of the foreleg into the lungs. IIl DORSAY had had no bones ac- ba, tually broken. He escaped with @—- only some severe contusions which forced him to forego the hunt and to travel in a hammock for some days. On the fourth day he had wanted to walk, but the doctor insisted that he had better rest a while longer. However, the doctor was proved wrong by a rhinoceros, which, charging the caravan, put the por- ters to flight and revealed to Dorsay that his tree-climbing powers had not in the least been impaired nor his injuries so seri- ous as the doctor said they were. They were now come to where the broken-forested country gives way to roll- ing plains which eventually run into the waterless tracts of the Nyasso Nyro. Here, in the midst of a fairly thickly populated district, was the doctor’s farm, as he called it, which, ike so many East African farms of the period, consisted “merely of virgin bush and grazing-land on which were some of the doctor’s cattle in charge of a neighboring chief. For the bene- fit of Dorsay, El] Hakkim—as the natives called the doctor—arranged a dance, and an impressive sight it was with the drums going and some thousand warriors, whose naked bodies gleamed with grease and paint, dancing and screaming as_ they brandished their spears with blades twice as long as bayonets. They rested there for three days while the doctor paid off the porters, arranged for the donkeys, and selected a dozen warriors whom to their delight he armed with Mar- tini rifles. However, an unexpected delay was occasioned by the chief wizard who, making magic to consult the oracle, re- ported that the venture was doomed to dis- aster. Instantly the dozen warriors re- canted. Dorsay, little used to the native, was naturally rather intolerant, particularly when the doctor insisted upon the gravity of the case inasmuch as they might well have to find soldiers elsewhere. Talking the matter over that night by the camp-fire, the doctor admitted that he was somewhat puzzled; for, as an old hand at the game, he had not forgotten to tickle EOPMICGLOOKS (E(9)