Adventure Magazine Cover — page 107: what you’re looking at

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

>, Aiocaidicns must further be Played upon now todotherest. _ Taking up a flimsy silken veil she went out to him where he now sat on the divan under the awning, along there in the tepid- scented Summer night. She crept to his side with the soft, graceful, questing move- ments of a cat, and sat-.there a moment unheeded almost—such was his abstrac- tion—her head resting lightly against his - shoulder, 3 “Lord of my soul, ”” she murmured pres- ently, “thou art sorrowing.” Her voice was in itself a soft and soothing caress. : He started, sad she caught the gleam of his eyes turned suddenly upon her. “Who told thee so?” he asked sus- _ piciously. 3 “My heart,” she answered, her voice — melodious as a viol, “Can sorrow burden thine and mine go light?” she wooed him. “Is happiness pos- sible to me when thou art downcast? In there I felt thy melancholy, and thy need of me, and I am come to share thy burden, or to bear it all for thee.” Her arms were raised, and her fingers interlocked them-» selves upon his shoulder. He looked down at her, and his expression softened. He needed comfort, and never was she more welcome to him. ~ Gradually and with infinite skill she drew from him the story of what had happened. When she had gathered it she loosed her indignation. “The dog!’ she cried. “The faithless, ungrateful hound! Yet have I warned thee against him, O light of my poor eyes, and thou hast scorned me for the warnings uttered by my love. Now at last thou knowest him, and he shall trouble thee no longer. Thou’lt cast him off, reduce him again to the dust from which thy bounty raised him.” But Asad did not respond. He sat there in a gloomy-abstraction, staring -straight before him. At last he sighed wearily. He was just, and he had a conscience, as odd ‘a thing as it was awkward in a corsair Basha. “In what hath befallen,” he answered moodily, “there is naught to justify me in casting aside the stoutest soldier of Islam. My duty to Allah will not suffer it.” “Yet his duty to thee suffered him to thwart thee, O my lord,” she reminded him very softly. a See The Sea-Hawk _ Pee ae. “In my desires—aye!” he aigaet: and | for a moment his voice quivered with pas- c sion. Then he repressed it, and continued = more calmly: “Shall my self-seeking overwhelm my duty to the Faith? Shall the matter ofa slave-girl urge me to sacrifice the bravest = soldier of Islam, the stoutest champion of the Prophet’s law? Shall I bring-down upon my head the vengeance of the One by de- = é stroying a man who isa scourge of scorpions = unto the infidel—and all this that I may gratify my personal anger against him, that “I may avenge the thwarting of a petty =: 2 : desire?” “Dost thou still say, O my life, that Sakr- a et | el-Bahr is the stoutest champion of the Prophet’s law?” she asked him softly, yet on a note of amazement. : “Tt is not I that say it, but his deeds,” he'answered sullenly. re “T know of one deed no True Believers ——— could have wroiight. If proof were needed ~ of his infidelity he hath now afforded it in a F taking to himself a Nasrani wife. Is it not written in the Book to be Read, ‘Marry not idolatresses?’ fountain of my soul?” _Asad frowned. Here was truth indeed, a 5 something that he had entirely overlooked. Yet justice compelled him still to defend a Sakr-el-Bahr, or else perhaps he but reasoned to prove to himself that the case against the corsair was indeed complete. “He may have sinned in thoughtlessness,” he suggested. him. “What a fount of mercy and forbearance | art thou, O father of Marzak! Thou’rt right as in all things. It was no doubt in thought- lessnéss that he offended, but would such thoughtlessness be possible in a True-Be- liever—in one worthy to be dubbed by thee the champion of the Prophet’s Holy Law?” It was a shrewd thrust, that pierced the armor of conscience in which he sought to— & ape empanoply ‘himself. He sat very thought- ful, scowling darkly at the inky shadow of the wall which the moon was casting. Sud- denly he rose. . “By Allah, thou art right!”’ he cried. that he thwarted me and kept that Frankish woman for himself he cared not how he ae sinned against the law.” Is not that’ the Prophet’s = Bt iy law, and hath he not broken it, offending == at once against Allah and against thee, At that she cried out in admiration of 2a . es 3 =< Pam ime ' _~ ~<a Oo > a , cComicbooks.com