Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 182: what you’re looking at

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

172 three hundred yards. And now it began to lurch, .and to rock up and down like a flivver on a corduroy road. I heard a sharp ping-g-g! and a bolthead whistled past my ear. Ten yards away a rail-end leaped up from the track like the head of a striking snake. A hundred-and-twenty- pound rail it was; and it curled up easily as a boy might bend a bit of barrel-hoop. The engine raced on, over a sagging, billowing road-bed that seemed to heave beneath it like a troubled sea. It was a quarter of a mile away—no more. Then suddenly it lurched to the left, then the right, and leaped the rail and plunged slantwise out upon the bosom of the Quag, burying its nose deep. And there it stopped in a vast cloud of steam, screaming like some stricken behe- _ moth, and settled slowly upon its side. The moon shone placidly; in the far ‘distance the peaceful lights of Black Valley town did not flicker. And the air was breathless-still, and the Black Quag was hushed—and waiting. A wondrous strange spectacle, this, thought I, to be staged for no more audience than my humble self; and fell to wondering, as men will at such a time, how many even stranger old Nature had deyised for no man’s eyes at all. That sinister cloud of steam thinned and melted away. The moon shone bright upon the overturned engine, and upon a tiny figure, gray-green and shadowy, which struggled half-way through its upper cab- window and strove to climb out of it, but could not. Helpless, nor desiring to intervene, I lay there watching. And I saw that long track settling slowly, and twin rivers of black muck form beside it and rise by inches to join each other. Farther on, the wrecked locomotive lay quiescent; and only from minute to minute, marking one rod and then another upon its flank, could I see how it sank and sank into the maw of the _ Black Quag. Lily - White Hand, faces held, writhed and struggled uselessly; his tiny figure was never still. And at times I caught the gleam of his white face, up- turned to the unheeding moon; and he tossed his arms, but made no outcry. He was a brave man, if a bad one. And so, by littles, through the long- drawn hours of that silent night, the new- laid road-bed sank from view. And with Adventure it, but still slower, sank that derailed engine, nose first, and oh, so slowly! It was a dreadful thing to see; not sudden, like the lightning-flash which is God’s anger, but inhumanly deliberate, callous, malign. What Lily-White Hand’s past had been I do not know; but though his soul were black as the cold, thick blood of the Quag, he paid his score in full during those age-long hours. The night dragged on interminably, and my blood thickened and slowed in my veins, though it was warm. But at last the moon dropped down behind West Hill, and the rose tints of coming dawn painted the eastern sky. And then, as if fearing that it might be robbed of its prey after all, the Black Quag, which had been deadly silent since that first outcry, gulped hungrily for its victim. Suddenly the air was full of tiny, bub- bling, sucking noises; the thick muck lip- lapped at the track, and took it suddenly. And even while I stared at it, blinking, the Black Quag leaped up, as it seemed, and engulfed the locomotive, all but a bit of its cab. And from that bit, which lessened mo- mently; the gray-green figure of Lily-White Hand still writhed and struggled—yes, and at the very last fought free! As the engine-cao sank and disappeared forever, he leaped from it, and stood for an instant erect, victorious, and shook a gloved fist in defiance of his enemy. One step forward he took—and the Black Quag had him, shoulder-deep. He had been a man; now he was but a tiny, bone-white dot upon the slimed, fissured surface of the Quag. And the red sun’s rim peeped over Cranberry Hill and shone upon that dot in mild surprize. A thin, far cry, drifted faintly to my ears; uncanny, shrill, despairing, muted by distance to the tiny squeak of a trapped mouse. And even as I heard that scream, and shuddered at it, Lily-White Hand was gone. I blinked, and strained my head upward; but my eyes beheld him not. The Black Quag spread empty before me, untamed of man as on the day of its creation. I am hardened to the sight of dying folk. Death is my old, familiar foe, whom I have held at grips through many a day and night. But the passing of Lily-White Hand shook me. I did not love to lie there helpless and watch his interment. COmicloo oN ) CO