Adventure Magazine Cover — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

The Web of the Sun registered the enormousness of his height in every nerve of his body. He could feel the chasm in the calves of his legs, along the imner sides of his arms, in his diaphragm. He could imagine himself falling—falling interminably down this abyss of light. His head felt queer. He was not sure whether his fingers had found a cusp and were holding to the cliff. It came to him as a sort of discovery that he had stopped climbing and was standing unsteadily clinging to something. His hands and feet seemed detached, and a long way from him. Then he heard Nunes and Birdsong shouting from vast distances. Birdsong’s voice said: “Take his pack, brother Nunes, and lean him right forward on mine—Lemme run my right arm through that loop—all right, careful now—If anything happens to us, brother Nunes, I hope T’ll meet you up yonder where ‘they ain’t no more sorrow nor troub ) hiatus in the flow of consciousness, merely a jump, a dislocation, a pick- ing up of ordered impressions out of no- where. When Lassiter regained his senses, he discovered first that the temperature had greatly irtcreased. When he gained a little more concentration, he saw he was far down the side of the cliff, and the flat green at the bottom. of the crater had resolved itself into the crests of trees with cultivated plots up near the northern half of the circle. The lake near the center of the vast amphitheater was of considerable size and lay beneath him, as blue as sapphire. Birdsong arose from where he sat and was about to pick the promoter up again when he saw Lassiter’s @yes were open. ‘Are you all right?” he asked cordially. The Stendill agent was thoroughly ashamed. He got himself weakly together. ‘This is a of a stroke I pulled,” he said in a sick man’s aspirate. “You'll be. O. K. pretty soon. high here.”’ “Don’t see how you ever got me down?” “Y never could have, Brother Lassiter, if the Lord hadn’t strengthened my arm, bless His holy name!’’ Lassiter looked up. He had evidently been shot down a tremendously long silken SYNCOPE produces no perceptible Not so 31 rope that had landed him here. He was now at the top of the detritus that had fallen from the overhang and the going from there down was rough but not danger- ous. He picked himself up presently and- started shakily down through the huge boulders. The three men disturbed an eagle nesting among the stones. The great bird launched itself into space with a whistling of feathers and flapped with slow strokes through the © diamond-like sunshine toward the forest below. A few hundred feet down, they ob- served two young vieunas playing among the cliffs. Later, they stopped at a spring set with ferns and drank. They were just climbing down into a sub- tropical country. After the bleak Andean scenery this kindliness of nature was as grateful as sunshine to beggars. Lassiter’s spirits began to revive. The commercial possibilities of the situation im- pressed him. Here were the temperature, the sunshine and glamour of the Riviera in an Alpine setting. Almost involuntarily he began projecting a tourist folder describ- ing the place. He could see a clump of royal palms on the southern edge of the lake that would make a good picture. On the front of his folder, he would have a picture in color showing the great reddish height of the volcano’s wall with mountain peaks towering above its rim. The beauty and vastness of his surroundings went through his nerves like a cold wind, and yet at the same time he continued thinking of his brochure. He thought of it just as an artist thinks pictures when looking upon magnificence. It was his profession. He would call it, “See the Riviera in the Andes.”’ Lassiter surveyed the scene with a sort of exaltation. Out near that lake he would construct an enormous tourist hotel. There would be sailing and fishing on its waters. Golf links would ring its blue expanse. A motor drive would follow the sixty-mile circuit of the cliffs By this time they were approaching the sinstane that lay beyond the shadow of the overhang. Birdsong and Lassiter were abreast with Nunes a little distance ahead. Birdsong walked so sturdily and was so much shorter than Lassiter that the pro- moter felt a return of shame that he had forced this little man to carry him down the cliff. DOOLK C@