Adventure Magazine Cover — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

586 were not to be granted that night. After a few hours of angry tossing, the youth made up his mind to defy the curfew laws, struck the flint, and once more lit the small length of tallow allotted to him. Geneva at last! . . . Three months since he had started from England, but a few days after that tavern meeting which had fired his young blood, and, throughout, the bur- den of his thoughts had been Todescan— Todescan of Geneva! A long and tedious way it had been, with more than one un- pleasant adventure. Laid by the heels at Cologne through some pernicious fever; hindered almost at every step by his igno- rance of tongues, of travel ... But the goal was reached; Geneva at last! Wrapped in his traveling-cloak, he began to rehearse the tale of his fencing knowledge, in preparation of the morrow’s ordeal, when he should face, foiled rapier in hand, “the king of them all,” as Captain Strongi’th’arm had dubbed this Todescan of Geneva. After the manner of men enamored, living in dreams of their lady; of poets, haunted by rhymes and lilts and metaphors; of misers, with thoughts ever circling round their treasures (madmen all, in their degree), so this youth, on whom the meretricious new- fangled rapier had cast her spell, had grown mad—mad as any lover, rhymester or har- pagon; fencing-mad even as the Martius portrayed by Marston. No uncommon oc- currence about these years! Not of lady’s eyebrows or instep; not of dimples by rosy lips, ran his fevered thoughts, but of nat- tiest tricks with edge and point, of undis- covered wards of the swift blades, and of the deadly masters of swordland! The few inches of candle supplied by the Roy David came abruptly to an end; the long unsnuffed wick collapsed, drowned its flame with a sizzle, and left him once more in darkness. Dick Wyatt was in that state of nocturnal lucidity of mind in which it seems verily as if sleep would never be known again in life. He remained as he was, sitting up in bed, gazing at some particular bright star that, between two gables, peered into the blackness of his room. In time the star progressed out of sight, and he had nothing left but to hearken to the all-per- vading silence; that singular silence of an enclosed town buried in slumber on a night of frost when not even a prowling animal is about. Into the stillness the tower-clock of a Adventure neighboring church dropped the stroke of one. The grave note reverberated with an odd emphasis; the pulsing vibrations hung lingering upon the air as if in warning. Strangely, the reminder of the hour ap- peared to break a spell. At first, to the mus- ing listener, it was only as if that sense of death-like hush had departed. True, he could hear nothing; yet he felt as if, in the world around, were sounds that ought to be heard. Presently he realized that there was indeed something astir under the silent scin- tillation of the stars. Filled with an unac- countable sense of surprise, he sprang out of bed, and, standing tiptoe in the darkness, strained his ear to catch he knew not what. A moment later he had pushed open the casement and thrust his head into the cold night; a rumor without, very faint, inter- mittent, indefinable; into the midst of it, suddenly springing, human sounds; a sharp cry, pain or rage; a call; and then a shot, harquebus or pistol; another! Silence again, and now a clang that made the woodwork rattle. All was as clear to his mind’s eye as if he saw; a culverin on the rampart had spoken. It was fight! It was a dead-of- night assault on the sleeping town! The news began to pour like water from open sluices through the main ways. Drums, sharp and panting, ran north and west, checkering the night. One came drub- bing up the High Street, and Dick bent out of his window to peer down. Nothing to be seen but a denser shadow in the dark, a faint whiteness—the skin of the drum. But out of the murk rose the cry, thrown out be- tween the taps, strangled words from a throat out of all breath: “To arms! To arms! To the Tertasse— the gate is taken! The Savoyards!”’ Right and left casements clattered back; heads were thrust forth with much exchange of exclamation. Half-dressed men, many in naught but shoes and shirts, came hastening out of their houses, halbert or matchlock in hand, feverishly concerting as they scurried toward the west ramparts, whence the clamor upwelled. And presently, over all, the great bell of the Cathedral threw the clang and drone of the tocsin, lamentable, making the windows, the very rafters, shiver as if with terror in the dark. Some new treachery of the ever-treach- erous Ligue party—the ferocious mercen- aries of the Duke of Savoy.... The sack of the town! ... "T'was a fearsome COMMICLOOCkKS. CO S|