Adventure Magazine Cover — page 154: what you’re looking at

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

148 In two seconds Thermoby had sparked— there is no other word for it—himself into a crack between the tiles, and even the cricket seemed to know that no foe upon this earth could follow this child of heated cracks into his own domain, and therefore it went away. No foe upon earth—save one. And that one he came upon now. Darting headlong into the crack between the tiles, and in- stantly crouching motionless, flattened as only he, with his body specially designed for the purpose, could flatten in a space so narrow that no foe powerful enough to face him could get at him there, he suddenly dis- covered the fact that he was not alone. Indeed, to be quite precise, Fate had chosen to land him very nearly on top of that other fire brat whose suspicious maneuverings pet ee him into this adventure to begin wit his surprize—if ever these creatures do feel surprize—and fought for it. ' As a fight, after so much promise, the struggle which followed was a distinct fraud—from the human point of view, at least. Possibly from a fire brat standpoint it was a battle. Anyway, they simply closed, grappled, and—well, they simply closed and grappled. After a time some one, looking very closely with a pocket-lens, could have seen that Thermoby had got one of the two delicate, slender little pincer things which he carried in front of him—in a tiny way resembling the same kind of thing possessed by prawns—in under the armor of his foe, well forward. That was all. What precise magic lay in that particular strangle-hold I can not tell you, but—it did the trick. After ten minutes Thermoby unloosed himself, so to speak, and went away, but the other did not. That other moved, in- deed, but only very feebly, and when, after some five more minutes, Thermoby, who, for some strange occult reason of his own, had been for an energetic walk round the adjoining cracks and crevices and country generally—a matter of two hand spans— came back, he found the foe evidenly in extremis and within a couple of inches of, where he had left him. Then Thermoby renewed that magic hold for some ten more minutes, and then—well, then, he fed. However, we may draw a cur- tain here—not that Thermoby did not feed like a gentleman. He did, most daintily, And like a flash, Thermoby recovered | Adventure more daintily, perhaps, than any creature on earth, and one would indeed have had the greatest difficulty in seeing that he was feeding at all, and, except for the loss of one front feeler and one leg—they seemed to have come off by merely being touched— his victim looked none the worse for the episode. But it was the realization that the fire brat was feeding upon his own kihd that makes the act horrible, for even in the wild, cannibalism is almost, as Mr. Kipling puts it, ‘a thing that no fellow can do.” Ke? A LONG time Thermoby spent at My WK Va) his meal, and another fire brat came and discovered him at it. The other fire brat was smaller than he, and passed on, but whether smaller or larger, it might easily have been Thermoby who had to pass on. It is so in fire brat society, for though they are with each other, they are never of each other, and an armed neutrality appears to be the nearest imitation they get of peace all their lives. Presently Thermoby went away—to di- gest and ponder, apparently. He went toward the fire, which had grown very red in the face, as fires will sometimes when you leave them to go out, and the heat in the place where he sat in a crack was some- thing awful! Even the kettle was begin- ning to sing again beside him. Yet he never seemed to mind it, and ap- parently he slept. At least, he did not move, and though his pin-point eyes never shut—or could shut—he certainly had the appearance of sleeping, or at any rate of basking: Thus then he remained stuck fast, as it were, struck rigid like a crocodile posed, for half-an-hour, till, all at once, five fire brats, coming along the same crack in Indian file touched one of his tail tips, and set him to violent lashing and a run forward. Here- upon a red-hot cinder fell not upon him only because he shifted quicker than it fell, and he found his way blocked by a, to him, fiery cliff of awful import. Spinning then instantly upon himself, he faced the others behind him, and discovered an impasse again. He could not go forward. They dared not go back, for a larger fire brat than all was behind, bringing up the rear, and they were rather small, one a little dinky fellow you could scarce see till he flashed. DOOLK (C©@