Adventure Magazine Cover — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

58 The swell of the scroll on the capital of one of the columns had been split in two. The solid stone radiated tangible heat ' when Lassiter approached it. “Now, if my abuela has not gone up to heaven with the sun,” began Tilita, placing her face in the aperture. ‘A moment later— “No, there she is.” She drew back and gave place to Lassiter. He placed his hands on two great projections of sculpture and peered through solid stone, some twenty feet thick. As soon as his eyes grew accustomed to the softened illumination, he saw he was looking into a chamber filled with many- colored lights. He sensed the color value of the light by the nude statue of a woman that knelt in direct line with the aperture. A dozen subtle reflections from the statue bespoke the colorful illumination. Its blanched surface was touched with pinkish, mauve and pavonine tints. The remarkable beauty of contour held Lassiter. The hair of the statue was done with actual human hair, after the fashion of the un-Hellenized Indians. The lips were scarlet. The eyes seemed to be inset of dark stones. Even a faint pilosity was suggested under the uplifted arms. In short, the sculptor of this kneeling Venus lapsed from splendid inspiration into over- detail. Lassiter was just regretting this slight disfigurement of a genuine triumph in sculpture when the eyelids of the statue seemed to close. Lassiter leaned forward with a slack jaw. He turned and encountered Tilita’s face almost touching his. “My God!” he aspirated. ‘‘She’s alive!’ The girl gave a little restrained laugh, for she was in a holy place. ““Certainemente—She is my abuela Lassiter looked back. ‘The face of the statue was as like Tilita’s as a reflection, except it was paler. While the promoter was looking he saw the eyes were open again. 29 x ALTHOUGH a marionette would have been of much service to the # Wt priests in the feocalla, to lend an aura of reality to the fantastic faith of the sun-worshipers, two reasons convinced Las- iter the figure was a woman. The promoter ‘ waters. Adventure did not believe that any sculptor on Moto- batl could handle the human figure with such mastery; and last, a school that could produce such art would condemn the vast baroque facade in which it was housed. The two were incompatible. The figure was a woman. . No doubt she knelt in some sort of trance. Primitive peoples are often skilled in such occultism: the fakirs of India, the Aissaquz of North Africa, the snake-dancers of New Mexico. He turned to the girl— “How long has your abuela been like that, Tilita?”’ “Ever since my madre was a tiny ntia. Her husband, my grandfather, was drowned in the lake, so my abduela joined her lord in the Sun.”’ She paused, then added, “My grandmother has thirty-nine years now— sixteen in the sun.” The number registered on Lassiter with odd emphasis. The Venus in the feocalla was, or had she lived, would have been, precisely his own age. By some means it had been possible to preserve a beauty such as Tilita possessed even in Motobatl. The two lovers were now walking up the jungle in the angle between the river and the cliffs. The sound of rushing water was so pronounced as to make conversation dif- ficult. In the jungle were their bird snares, and Tilita ran before to examine each one before Lassiter reached it. One had caught a bird, a tanager. The girl beckoned gaily for Lassiter to come and hold it while she tied on a message to the outer world. She did it gaily, as a sort of game, because Motobatl was not a prison, but a universe to her who knew nothing else. The two worked their way through the jungle to the bank of the river where it debouched into the cliff. The stream was about forty yards wide at the place of its disappearance. The volume of water rushed down its stony bed, struck the opposing wall, piled up, was deflected in a great whorl back on itself, then spun around a hole in the center of the flood and vanished with a gigantic sucking sound. The whirlpool stirred a cool breeze on the~ sultriest days. The green fronds and flowers along its banks waved in a perpetual blast. But what always held and amazed Lassiter was the hole in the maelstrom. From the shore, it seemed a yard or two in width. It swung here and there in the wheeling Its glassy funnel twisted and bent MICLOOOK (©