Adventure Magazine Cover — page 159: what you’re looking at

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

\\ oe \ ARVN uy \ 2 on Wal ) a \ 1 §vV aN ; a ‘ fh ITED J ay : te ee = aN / Ne ylcoDerl Vimpson RSX Bo “ Oe ee \ (ill ye Re eS) OU 3 te ON Al 4 + dt 4é ay Ae 7¢ Author of ‘‘Taking Over Gettison,” “The Sw n Song of Knife-Edge Harrington,” etc. aN ITH the coming of the sun, Gil- Wf ford rose from his knees, leaned his rifle against the salt and sand bags in front of him and yawned. “What a night! asinine business anyway?”’ Harth looked up sleepily. He was a fat and large and altogether surprizing person and he looked at Gilford out of two promi- nent blue eyes that exaggerated the redness of his hair. He had a reputation for doing things—unusual things—from taming ta- rantulas and omitting quinin to whistling like a prize linnet and trifling with two-hun- dred-and-forty-pound kegs of lead shot as if they were cricket balls. “Don’t know,” he grunted in reply to Gilford’s disgusted query. ‘‘Foster, maybe. Cigaret?”’ Gilford accepted one of Harth’s cigarets, lighted it lazily and glanced carelessly about him. Inside the barricade around the Benin City consulate, other men were rising to their feet expressing their disgust in no uncertain terms, while faithful ebony body- servants scurried into the consulate kitchen in pursuit of steaming cups of cocoa and other beverages in the hope of allaying the early morning irritation of their masters. None of them, however, was more dis- gusted with the situation than Gilford. Tall, broad, his leonine head reaching proudly above the level of ordinary mortals, Gilford at once gave the impression of being Who staged this ‘Gilford the Gifted, copyright, 1922, by Robert Simpson. able and anxious to finish anything to which he set his hand, and also of attempting much that the majority would never dream of beginning. He had been ordered up from Marsden & Co.’s trading factory at Sapeli to the com- pany’s mahogany concession at Rawyafa and had reached Benin City at sundown the previous evening. Instead of the comforting bath he had expected after his long tramp through the bush, he had been met by Harth, who was in charge of Marsden’s Benin City establish- ment, and was hurried post-haste to the consulate. There Gilford had at once become pos- sessed of a sense of seething unrest and a rifle. Impending disaster lurked ominously on the, fringe of the bush beyond the bat- tered mud wall that encircled the old Benin stronghold. And when he had learned in plain lan- guage that the Bini was momently expected to raise Cain again, he took his place behind a low barricade of salt and sand bags, in- forming Harth that the incident reminded him of an uncle of his who had fought at Rorke’s Drift. While they waited for the Bini to emulate the Zulu, Gilford furnished a monotoned description of the heroic defense of Rorke’s Drift in minute detail. It had been a good fight and apparently his uncle had been in the thick of it most of the time. “He had to be,” Gilford declared .dryly. 153 NOOK C@