Adventure Magazine Cover, October 10, 1921 — page 146: what you’re looking at

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

SHAT. TERED “ALFAR S E.O. FOSTER Author of ‘‘Privit Morey, the Pair o’ Thim,” ‘‘The Coconut Grenadiers,” etc. ** “Auld harps’ is like young soldiers—not to be picked upon by strangers.” —Old Spud. UNDUK NANG KAO, its conical exterior covered with a defying tangle of sharp-edged cogon grass Fh and poison-spiked bejuco, rose like a giant ink-bottle from the table-land skirting the southern shores of the Laguna de Bay. The silver of the rising moon threw into bold relief its velvety outline, broken only by the giant bamboo whose plumed head towered above its crest like an old-fashioned quill left standing in its horn by a careless scribe. Since early noon, Private Peter Morey had been hewing and hacking his way from the rear of the guard-house toward its summit, rising a scant two hundred feet above the flagstaff on the headquarters of Major John T. Morphy, cOMmanding at Los Banos, where the Second Battalion of the —teenth U. S. Infantry and the First Battalion of the Second Washington Volun- teers had been stationed since that village had been captured by American troops. Tattoo was sounding as he won his way free from the jungle and stepped into the narrow border of short herbage which marked the mouth of the extinct mud vol- cano. Directly opposite, the rounded cliff of a seismic upthrust hung poised in the shadows as if it were the bottle’s lid awaiting the touch of an impatient finger to drop it clattering over the well of inky waters which lay pulsing in the crater below, silent as an insurgent plot, cruel as a priest of the Katipunan. There was a flicker of light on its face which grew larger and larger as the moon crept higher and higher up the ladder of the east, to thrust at last his rounded visage through an oblong fault in the apparently solid wall, his focused beams striking full at the foot of the swaying bamboo. Morey gazed in wonder at the ‘beauty of the scene, drawing back quietly as the muffled tread of many feet marching in unison told of a subterranean passage beneath his feet. He had followed the clue found while on guard the day before to its logical conclusion and was now standing at the door of the house of the mysterious gods of the Katipunan. There was a subdued scuffling of feet as of spectators taking their places at an execution, a moment of quiet broken by a tiny wail, plaintive as from a pygmy’s flute. Morey dropped prone on the grassy border and worked forward, inch by inch, until he was able to peer downward into the gloom. The shaft of the moon dropped lower and lower, limning faintly the outlines of a bamboo scaffolding hugging the walls below, its broad platform, packed with white-robed, white-hooded figures, jutting over the black bowl like the balcony of a 136 theater. Over the scene the shadows moved and flitted mysteriously” CONnnicGoOolkxS Com