Adventure Magazine Cover — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

Buried Gods Dorsay to his delight bagged two elephants and the doctor three; for here they were practically out of touch with the adminis- tration, in a district where usually the little man was accustomed to doing as he pleased. On the fifth day and all night a dance was held in honor of the full moon, and the wizard, after casting his spells, declared that the times were propitious for the start —thanks possibly to the present of a calf. The chosen twelve were in excellent spirits. Next day the donkeys were loaded up and the caravan started. After twenty- four hours’ march the going became unin- teresting, for they entered upon a tongue of the stony, waterless desert stretching up from the Nyasso Nyro. The doctor fig- ured on striking the confines of the Tur- kana country on the sixth day out, travel- ing fairly hard. In order to lessen the strain of the pas- sage on man and beast, the doctor decided to make extra marches by night, profiting by the light of the moon; so that, instead of the usual five days to cross the strip of desert, they reached the country where there was sweet water, scrub and a few trees, on the night of the third day. Here they were to halt for twenty-four hours to give the animals time to recuperate and get a square feed. Toiling for hours every day in the pow- erful rays of the equatorial sun across an expanse of dazzling white was both tire- some and trying. The plan proposed by the doctor was that when they reached the first of the Turkana villages where they would have to sue the chief Yamba for permission to enter the country and generally be fumigated in the native way against white men’s evil spirits, they would pose as traders wishing. to traverse the country peaceably. As the blood-stained message had -failed to give them any hint of the locality, they would work up toward the mountain and judiciously attempt through their own men to discover the whereabouts of the reputed white king who, the doctor thought, would prove to be the writer of the message; or at any rate one who could aid them. Direct question to the natives would seal their lips for good, if it didn’t lead to active and instant hostility. The moon rose that night toward nine o’clock. The order of march was to leave about Il nine and march until four or five and camp again for the day, as the animals could make better going in the comparative cool of the night. After that, since they would be get- ting into an inhabited country, this would be inadvisable lest they provoke an attack by the natives, who might suppose them to be evil spirits of the night. They -had been under way abebe two hours. In the lead was the Wondorobo hunter upon whom devolved the duty of selecting the path through the purple and silver of the night. Following him came Dorsay and the doc- tor and six of the warriors, their long-bladed spears-like white flames in the moonlight. Behind the donkeys, tail to tail, trudged as patiently as only a burro can. In the rear came Mahomet and the personal servants and the remainder of the Wakikuyu men. As the Wondorobo turned down a shallow donga, or dry watercourse, he suddenly dropped on to his knees with his head to the earth. “Down! Down! Quick!” whispered the doctor, imitating him. As he obeyed, Dorsay saw that the Waki- kuyu were already flat on the ground. Doubling back on the trail, the Wondo- robo ran like a monkey on all fours. Dor- say heard the doctor swear as the men whispered. | FOR a while Dorsay’s untrained gi ears failed to note anything other ome than the usual murmuring of the veld. ‘Then, just as the doctor spoke, he caught the faint but unmistakable thud of galloping hoofs. As the doctor was speaking rapidly in the dialect, Dorsay’s momentary bewilderment at the idea of horses in central Africa was solved by the recollection of a story of the doctor’s in which it appeared that the Abys- sinians and Somalis in mountainous country, who had and could keep horses, were in the habit of raiding south to the confines of the Wakikuyu and Turkana country, for ivory and slaves. Just as some of the men, in obedience to the doctor’s orders, were hustling the don- keys into a herd, came the sound of hoofs striking stones, and the figures of mounted men in what looked like Arab robes broke from a sparse clump of trees silhouetted against the sky. “Quick!” exclaimed the doctor, throwing COPMICLOOOKS con