Adventure Magazine Cover — page 86: what you’re looking at

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

842 | by the present necessities of embarkation from a wave-swept pier of slippery lava- blocks, and ten minutes later they stood together on the white deck of the yacht. She was a two-hundred footer, steel-hulled, brigantine-rigged, with the twin funnels and high freeboard of the sea-spanner. On the forecastle deck a smartly clad officer, whose high shoulders and long shambling legs were to Stuart quite familiar, was put- ting a double line of blue-clad jackies through a kind of marine drill. About the deck were various other seamen in white overalls, rubbing vigorously at the bright work that made so brave a show of glitter in the Arctic sunshine. As Berwind led the way down the companion, the sound of a sweet mezzo-soprano voice came up to them, and the Doctor paused on the upper steps, holding up a cautionary hand. “I love to hear her sing,”’ he said simply. Stuart stood still on the step above him and listened as Nora Lee went on, uncon- scious of their approach, with the little song he had first heard her maid singing in the hall of Haldr’s house: ‘** Down she came as white as milk, A rose in her bosom as soft as silk.”’ Capriciously she stopped in the middle of the chorus and wandered away from the piano, and, there being no further reason for their remaining where they were, the two men descended the rest of the stairs together. The cabin, though luxurious, had es- caped being decorated in what has been termed the Pullman-Palace-Car style. Around the better half of it ran a wide, comfortable seat, and the baby-grand piano, clamped to the wall and the floor, fitted one corner. There were books and comfortable chairs,and many cushions. At a large sideboard a moonfaced Chinese boy was setting forth hospitable siphons and decanters. At the long center-table sat Mr. Lee with © the bell at his elbow and a confused litter of papers spread all about him. In the farther corner Nora silently turned to greet the newcomer. Her hand was un- friendly, her smile was enigmatic, but from the necessity of studying her present mood Mark was relieved by an enthusiastic out- burst from Mr. Lee. “See here, I have done it!’ he’ cried. “Has Berwind told you? I have my finger on your treasure, young man!” Adventure “No!” gasped Stuart. ‘‘Where?”’ Mr. Lee pushed him into a chair and thrust the papers beneath his eyes, talking excitedly all the time. “See,” he said, “‘here are the pencil-rub- bings we took of the inscriptions, first ofall. Nora made them. Look! Quite perfect. So on these I set to work. It has been a task; but upon my soul, it has given me new life! Look now, here is the translation I have made. Do you understand Gothic at all—well enough to follow?” Stuart turned from the black, pencil- rubbed sheets to the Jagged papers of Mr. Lee’s manuscript. ‘‘This will do for me,” he said breathlessly. “For the Gothic, I assure you I shall have to trust to your erudition.” Mr. Lee beamed on him. Indeed, his de- light in this momentary return to his old interests and in the young man’s homage to his learning was hardly short of pathetic. “AS YOU SAY,” he said pom- gi pously, “it is not worth while my =! giving you the exact words. The Gothic is obscure and corrupt, but this is what I make of these words that run about the rim above these chased Latin words that were evidently the work of the original bell-founder.”” The speaker paused. “To God and to the Archangel Mich- ael,’”? he read aloud impressively, ‘“‘‘this gold—this treasure’—literally, ‘this earth- born wealth—we render back with our prayers and our great grief.’”’ Stuart moved in his seat like an excited child. “T will not bother you with the exact idiom,” said Mr. Lee; “the gist of the mat- ter is, they are putting away the treasure against the Judgment Day, which they are evidently expecting in a year or two. And —here we come to the root of the matter— they give here explicit directions concern- ing the location of the treasure; so that on the Last Day the Archangel may have no difficulty in finding his own.” Stuart took in a long breath. ‘‘So that’s the game! Offering the treasure back to Heaven in the hope that the curse may be lifted off their shoulders, poor devils! Fancy how disgusted they must have been when the end of the world did not come after all! Excuse me for interrupting, Mr. Lee. And please go on!” Mr. Lee went on importantly. “Now C© MICLOOKS C©