Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

1016 “He is getting better, thank the Lord! You see, we have been lessening the quantity of drug these past few weeks and just now we are getting down near the minimum dose. Upon my word, Stuart, just fancy how you would feel if you solved all the geologic questions of this enigmatic wilderness before us and you will have some idea of what it means to a young physician, who has never been any too successful in the past, to find himself on the threshold of performing a cure that his seniors and betters have given up in despair. But this drop in the tempera- ture is odd!”’ Stuart glanced up at him as his tone changed and, seeing Mr. Lee and Nora, understood and smiled. ‘They were Coming toward him with a steward in tow, who car- ried the forgotten bell. At the sight of it Stuart smiled and stretched out his hands. ‘“There it is,” he said. ‘‘I have dreamed of it!” He laughed and half rose from the chair where he lay rolled like a chrysalis in rugs, but Mr. Lee put out a quick imperious hand. “Sit still!’ he cried with impatient kindli- ness. ‘‘ Heavens, young man, if you did not have me to take care of you, you’d be dead of cold and over-exertion long before this. Now, Levine, put the bell down on Mr. Stuart’s knee. Isittooheavy? No? And wrap that blanket properly about his feet.” MARK STUART laughed up into his host’s face. Nora, pursuing her policy of balancing her father’s solicitude for their guest by a pointed in- attention on her own part, turned away with a little remark to Berwind. “Tt is cold! Captain Healy was telling me the thermometer has dropped thirty degrees since yesterday. He thinks there must be ice in the offing.”’ “Tt is probably a bit of the Greenland floe,” said Stuart, quite as if she had not excluded him from the conversation. Nora bit her lip and looked out across the fiord. Whereat Stuart, resolutely putting her whim aside before his interest in the subject broached, turned to Mr. Lee. ‘““You may have heard, sir, this is the season when the Greenland ice breaks up and comes careering South to search for trans-Atlantic liners. There is a twist in the Arctic current that brings them down around this very corner of Iceland. More of your curse, if you like.” ===) te?) | . y : = Adventure Mr. Lee nodded soothingly. ‘No fear, young man, no fear! We have a good har- bor, a good ship, if I do say it, and, best of all, a good captain. That fellow Healy—a lucky find he was, uponmy word! There is no danger of his taking us out till your friends the icebergs have sailed by. And meanwhile, here we are where we longed to be. Do you make anything more out of the mystery of that bell, Stuart? It does seem as though here under the very shadow of the High-Gone Hills themselves some inspira- tion would be vouchsafed us.”’ Stuart lifted a glowing face. “It is strange, isn’t it, to think that we are really here on the spot—within a possible hundred miles or so of where the whole far-off tragedy played itself out, somewhere in the mists of long-dead ages.”’ He turned his face again dreamily toward the far end of the fiord. ‘“‘‘Let the old wo step on the stage again,’”’ he quoted below his breath. ‘‘The betrayed guest, the repentant, despairing murderess, the icy, crawling fingers of the curse. What a tragedy, and what a setting!” CHAPTER XX THE RED ROCK OF HALF tc LOOKED at the high-piled fantastic wilderness about themandsmiled. Mr. Lee was likewise staring away at the barren hills of the fiord. Suddenly Stuart caught his breath. “By ginger!” hesaid. Hesat upright. “Look!” he cried. “Look! Do you see?” He was staring at the bell. The two men leaned over him. Nora, behind his chair, bent down in a self-forget- ting excitement. Stuart could not see her, but he was aware, even in that moment, of her light breathing that came and went near his cheek and the soft unconscious pressure of her little hand upon his shoulder as she leaned over him. Even through the heavy fur-lined coat that he wore, it seemed to him that her touch, airy though it was, stole with a sweet and pervasive warmth. For the first time she spoke to him in tones natural and unconstrained. ‘“‘T see the chalices, Mr. Stuart, yes, but you are looking at them upside-down!”’ ‘“‘Upside-down?”’ responded Mark quietly. ‘“‘Tam not so sure, Miss Lee. Look!” With his finger in its clumsy glove, he traced the Comicloooks CO