Adventure Magazine Cover — page 34: what you’re looking at

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

24 “T wonder what Sefior Birdsong is going to do?”’ &3 short blocky rustic was carrying his newly: made parcels one by one to the very edge of the abyss. Both Nunes and Lassiter jumped up and started toward . “Hey, Birdsong, what you want done?” called the promoter. ‘‘We make two hands, you know.” The colporteur turned about. “Well,” he said with his uncomfortable frankness, “I’m getting ready to go down into this place. don’t take much stock in the Lord’s. work. I didn’t want to call on you to do anything.” “T don’t like that,” cried the New Yorker. “T’ll admit I’m not the enthusiast you are, Birdsong, but when I start with a man I mean to see him— Say, how are you going to get down?e”’ Birdsong looked at him. “T hate to tell you, Brother Lassiter.” “Why?” cried the agent, greatly sur- prized. “Because when I mention anything about my Lord and Master, it seems like it kinder throws you and Brother Nunes in a bad temper.” Birdsong’s drawl was monotonous as usual, but his words painted clearly enough his loneliness of soul. A qualm of self- reproach went through Lassiter. LASSITER watched him. The “T'll help you carry the Bibles to the edge, Zeke,” he proffered fraternally, ‘and you can tell me how you are going to get down if you care to.”” He followed the man from Yell to his bundles, picked up one and started to the edge. “Well—it’s just this,’ began Birdsong with a certain humble boldness, “I’m doing my part in spreaden the blessed Word among the heathen and I know the Lord’ll © do His. how ‘““You—you expect a miracle to lift these books to the bottom of the cliff?”’ : “Yes, and me too, Brother Lassiter,” agreed Birdsong simply; then he added, “You needn’t carry none unless you want to, Brother Lassiter.” “Oh—I—I’ll help——”’ The steamship agent’s nerves teetered on the edge of mirth, pity for, and wonder at He’ll git ’em down there some- 9) this indomitable monomaniac, Then, with I know you two fellows. Adventure a queer feeling, Lassiter recalled how Bird- song had simply walked out into Madison Square and waited for a berth.on the Brazilian—and it had come. Now he was just as simply lugging his Bibles to the brink of the precipice— However, there was this difference between the two events. In New York, Birdsong had one chance in about a million. Here, he had none at all. He had no chance because the expedition had been stopped by the crater of a vol- cano. Not exactly a crater either, but the sides of a volcano whose top had crushed in some millions of years ago. The ruins of such cataclysms are fairly frequent in Ecua- dor. ‘This one had left a vast circular hole in the earth which appeared to be about a mile or a mile and a quarter in depth and about eighteen or twenty miles in width. In daylight it did not appear so enormous as at sunset, but Lassiter realized that at this hour it was really larger than it seemed. He judged it must be wider than the Grand Cafion, and perhaps deeper. It was huger than the crater of Kilauea in Hawaii be- cause it was not a crater, but the circular ramparts of a volcano truncated by its summit crashing into its base. That long- gone catastrophe left a vast concavity, with walls five or six thousand feet high that leaned strongly inward. Into this impossi- ble place, Birdsong expected to be trans- — lated. The walls of this enormous barricade were colorful with a red cast that varied into grays and blues. And the vast circuit was molded into strange architectural shapes, something like the mesas of New Mexico and Utah. Its bottom was lined with a verdure which showed vividly green, even from that great height. This green expanse was broken only in a place or two, and by a lake near the center of the vol- cano, and a stream that led away to its eastern side. No doubt, this lake, which slept so tranquilly in the heart of the great inclosure, furnished the steam, millions of years ago, which demolished one of the smoking Andes and left this splendid ruin In its stead. Lassiter did not mention this probable geologic history to Birdsong, because he knew the colporteur would instantly affirm that that explosion wons ago had been staged for the express purpose of testing his, Ezekiel Birdsong’s, faith in this day of grace. DOOLK (C©