Adventure Magazine Cover — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

The step in the slope of the gully. The din from above grew louder, pealed up to thunder notes, shrilled in their very ears, and then swallowed them, as it were, in a very tor- rent of sound. And other torrents were let loose. Foam-white as a falling cataract, the huge billow of snow and stone shot out over the protecting lip of stone above them and spouted through the narrows of rock into the void of the ravine. For a matter of seconds the white veil hung roaring between the four men and the blue of the sky, and then was gone. Its speed had been their salvation. Flung far out from the lip of the drop above them, the avalanche had leaped, as it were, over their bodies into the freedom of the void. Dazed, incredulous of their own safety, they lay at the foot of the wall of rock, and blinked at the dawn-lit day. GRESHAM made an incoherent exclamation and struggled to rise. Jovan’s heavy hand fell upon his shoulder. “Not yet, signor!” he said vehemently. “They may set other icefalls moving or, if Allah favor us, may descend to see if their work is fully done. Lie still, all of you! This hand is, perhaps, not yet played, nor this trick in our game taken!” Vilip looked at him earnestly and then nodded. He leaned across and began to whisper in the Albanian’s ear. The latter made a quick gesture of assent. “Tf your Excellencies will consent to remain motionless for a matter of five min- utes,” said Vilip, ‘“‘we shall be greatly helped. Will your Excellencies consent?”’ Gresham and Agnew exchanged glances. The latter gave a little shrug. ‘‘Ten min- utes,” he agreed. ‘But, if you can manage it, make haste. A snowdrift is not the pleasantest of beds, and another ava- lanche ” He finished by lifting his shoulders again significantly. “T have to thank your Excellencies for your trust,” said the courier amiably. “Ten minutes, if things go as one may expect, will amply suffice. Excuse us, signors.”’ As he spoke the two seemed to vanish, Jovan on the left, Vilip on the right. The torn snowdrifts received them. Gresham and Agnew were left to cool and cheerless meditation below the rock wall which cut off all view of the terraced hillside above. Road QOT For a minute or two complete silence, save for the purr of the river far below, surrounded them. And then the still- ness was broken by the sound of a human voice. A man called to his fellow in Turkish. The sounds continued and came nearer. Agnew, indeed, whose knowledge of the local vernacular had increased by leaps and bounds during the last two months, was enabled to distinguish words. “To God be acclamation!” said one of the unseen. ‘‘The gully has been smoothed as a plane smoothes a plank! There is not a trace of the accursed!”’ There was a chuckle of satisfaction. ‘It remains to find out who and what we have disposed of. He is not one to accept a story lacking substantiation.” Agnew, looking up, saw the half of a sandaled foot project over the edge of rock above him. The next instant two eyes were staring directly into his own— brown, dilated, horrified eyes these, meet- ing his with incredulous wrath. An exclamation rang out into the echoes. A couple of brown hands, appearing from nowhere in particular, snaked out and locked beneath the sunken chin. A yard or two to the left another shout and the sound of stumbling feet told its own tale. With a muffled thud, descending, as it seemed, from the core of a snow-cloud which their struggles set astir, two bulky objects fell beside Gresham and Agnew. They discovered themselves as two tunic-clad men, immovably locked about the elbows by Jovan and Vilip respectively. They made frenzied but ineffectual efforts at release. “Tf your Excellency would concern your- self to shackle this fellow’s legs,” said Vilip’s voice, proceeding from behind his captive’s ear, ‘“‘much time and strength would be saved.”’ Agnew laughed. The humor of the situ- ation appealed to him. The matter-of- factness in the courier’s voice and de- meanor had its comic side. He whipped off his own belt and tightened it about the prisoner’s knees. Gresham, meanwhile, was offering Jovan the solid assistance of his weight which he had brought into ac- tion by disposing his person upon the other captive’s struggling limbs. Within the space of two minutes the men were very completely at their captors’ mercy. cCOmiclboolks CO