Adventure Magazine Cover — page 91: what you’re looking at

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

Dixie think that already the darkness was blot- ting out the ksar—which was tiny, but a labyrinth—and that beyond that lay the great refuge, the great hiding-place, the desert. The Arab smiled and made as if to turn. With a swift movement he seized the end of the musket and, wriggling aside from the thrust, tore it from the sentry’s hands, turned it about and drove it through his breast with a single motion. The other sentinel shouted and would have fired, but the Arab was upon him with a bound. The soldier threw up his weapon in defense and the bayonets locked. The negro forced him backward, jerked his weapon free and a sudden left-handed thrust sent the blade out six inches behind the Zouave’s back. The assassin planted his foot on the dead man’s breast and drew the bayonet forth, seized the other gun and leaped away. Balls whistled about his ears, twenty Zouaves sprang in pursuit, but a sharp com- mand brought them back. The officer was furious. “Why didn’t you kill him—the rest of you?” he demanded while they gazed in consternation on their slain comrades. It had suddenly become entirely dark and he redoubled the guard. ‘‘Shoot every thing that moves!”’ was his last command. It was incredible—two sentries killed within fifty yards of the camp! And the murderer had escaped! Well, to-morrow there would be reprisal, for a squadron of Spahis or Chasseurs d’Afrique would be sent to Beni-Garfa where the assassin had undoubtedly fled. (2) was Clear, with the soft luster of the stars. The Milky Way shone like an incandescent ribbon of gauze stretched across the sky, and the shooting-stars fell like rockets all about the horizon. The long line of camp-fires of the column glowed like splashes of vermilion on the murk of the earth. Their light was reassuring, yet the sentinels of the Zouaves were uneasy. It was the desert, mysterious, threaten- ing and ravenous, that seemed to draw up closer and shut them in with horrors that waited just beyond the circle of light. It was after midnight when a sentry thought that he saw something move in the dry bed of the owed. He watched it a THERE was no moon, but the night Pasha 655 moment and then raised his gun. But a hand was slapped over his mouth, his head was jerked backwards, a razor-edged sec- guin was drawn softly across his throat, and he fell back into a pair of arms that laid him carefully on the ground. It is a very simple thing for a twain that have worked together before. But some one bungled a bit somewhere, for one Zouave managed to let off his gun. The hubbub of screams and occasional shots that came faintly to the ears of the column lasted but a few moments and ceased altogether just as a Zouave, weapon- less and breathless, burst in, gasping of an attack. The drums rolled the call to arms, and the column quickly formed. But the expected attack did not come, although the first Zouave was followed by a dozen cor- roborative others. The Spahis, circling quickly about, came to the camp by the river. It was silent and the fires were extinguished. The rest of the Zouaves were there, and a dozen or so of Arabs to boot, but not many; the attack had been too sudden and overwhelming. Also there were a few rifles that had been over- looked, but not many of these, either. It was a stunning blow. A company of Zouaves wiped out in five minutes within a mile of the main column! The next day the punitive expedition went through Beni-Garfa with fire and sword. Of course the people there were not the assassins, but they must have known and should have told. And a lesson was never amiss among the children of the Prophet. “Tt was a man of genius who planned that attack!’ said the French General. “‘He has modern guns and plenty of ammunition. We shall find him at Bou-Denib with Mo- hammed Jebbour.”’ + IN THE meantime the men of Oud- aghir were dreaming, while the negro vas". haranoued them in his broken Ara- bic. He had been a marvel to them when he first came amongst them asaslave. He had been a marvel since, and now he was thrice a marvel that he had planned this wonder- ful coup and. won for them the weapons of their dreams. And Sam Ames, once of the Twenty-Fifth U. S. Infantry, and more recently an outlaw in the Republic of Li- beria, looked on the eagle-eyed; hook-nosed sons of the desert that gathered about him CORnNICLO© S (C@