Adventure Magazine Cover — page 34: what you’re looking at

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

24 Then I arose, to find that we were lying in a clear space where the center of the fight had been, and that the remainder of the Tong-guard, crouching before the sweep of O’Day’s ax, was making a stand at the other end of the room—around the silken cushions where the council had sat. It was a last stand; they were rats in a trap, and as desperately deadly. As I rose, two of our engineers rushed forward in an attempt to break the line. Two sword-blades licked out, and they both staggered back. ‘Then for the second time, the ranks broke and mingled. Burns and O’Day, swung with their backs to the right- hand wall, struck out terribly at a half- dozen which wheeled to their assault. I was just going to their assistance, when suddenly I saw one Chinese—the red- bloused guard who had stood at Murchison’s elbow when the council was in session, dodge around the outskirts of the fight, flash past Doc Parsons, and slip out of the shattered door. The doctor’s bullet, fired too late to stop him, hummed past my ear; and then I was out of the door, too, and after him. As I had known he would, he turned down the passage leading to the dungeons, pad- ding over the uneven stones of the passage with a rapidity that left me far behind. And, but for some difficulty he had with the rusted lock of the cell in which May- sing was imprisoned, he would have ac- complished his purpose before I, bruised by running into the invisible angles of the walls, could have caught up with him. As it was, I hurled myself through the wooden door just in time to catch his wrist as he raised his dagger above the girl. Evidently the moon had been obscured by clouds when Burns and I were in the cell; now, from a narrow air-slit near the ceiling trickled a few rays of bluish moonlight. They enabled me to see my enemy’s throat; and in an instant my fingers were around it. He dropped back, catching me around the waist in a crushing grip as he did so; and the next moment we were on the slimy floor, growling like beasts, in a death- grapple. In the surprize of the moment, he had for- gotten the dagger he still held; but suddenly TI felt one of his hands leave my side, and knew he was preparing to stab me. The point of the dagger had grated against a rib before my hands, snatched from his throat, could arrest it. I twisted the wrist Adventure until the dagger dropped tinkling to the floor; and then, with a heave of his legs, the Chinese threw me off and rolled over on me. Now his hands were on my throat, and his knee on my chest; the darkness seemed to break into a thousand volcanoes of fire. I struggled, tore at the yellow fingers sunk in my neck, kicked and rolled under the pressure of the knee that was driving the life out of me; but the volcanoes were just being extinguished by black waters that advanced with a roar like the dissolution of worlds, when suddenly I felt my adversary go limp and release his clutch. The next instant he had fallen forward on me and was gasping horribly, with his face on the stone fleor. ‘“‘Are you hurt, Car-ter?” came the voice of May-sing, as if from thousands of miles away. ‘Car-ter!”’ mes IT COULD not answer. All the See, arrears of weariness from my period =“ of unconsciousness and violent ex- citement seemed to have come upon me at once; and while my instincts urged me to get up and rejoin the battle which seemed still to be raging in the council-chamber, I could not move. I could still hear O’Day’s voice bellowing above the thud-thud of his ax and the crackle of revolver-shots; the fight seemed to have extended to the cor- ridor; Tong-men in retreat, I thought. I made a futile effort to rise but fell back gasping. May-sing’s fingers sought over my shoulders for my face; the dagger which she had picked up and plunged into the Chinese rang again on the flagstones; and then I felt her silk-clad arm slip under my head and raise it. That is my last clear recollection until I awoke in my bunk on the ship with the pungent taste of brandy in my mouth, the electric light glaring into my eyes through the undrawn curtains, and the face of Doc Parsons, a dirty bandage around his forehead, above me. ‘“Where am I?” I asked, as he drew back and put down the brandy-bottle on top of my cupboard. From outside came the rattling roar of the steam-capstan forward. It seemed to shake my very brain. Rolling clumsily over the side of the bunk I picked up a pillow from the settee and stuffed it into the end of the ventilator. There seemed to be something eluding me. The noise of that GOMIIGoOO S (©