Adventure Magazine Cover — page 7: what you’re looking at

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

ALEPPO “csi bY Harold Lamb JAN. 3501924 VOLXLIV N°G 7 Author of “Men from Below,” Tul f UB | wy y —“ HE WITCH OF ACOMPLETE t4i : or L f 4 i “The King Dies,’’ etc. I IN BARRACKS When the storm comes, the snow pigeon takes refuge in the earth, but the wild goose flies south. When the sun is warm, the snow pigeon soars into the air, but the wild goose wings its way to the gray north. = * NOW was ‘falling that evening in Ser, December, when the year 1613 of any Our Lord was drawing to its close. iV" A sighing wind from the open steppe swept the drifted snow from the roofs of the barracks and sent it swirling along the parade ground of the Siech, the war encampment of the Cossacks. White, whirling devils leaped and van- ished in front of the yellow squares that Copyright, 19274, by The Ridgway Company in the United States and Great Britain. were the horn windows of the kurens, the long, log barracks. Few windows showed a light in the Siech because only a skeleton army was encamped there. A few hundred Cossacks held the border post where thousands should have been, on the island upon the icy breast of Father Dnieper—the river which, in that war-ridden generation, marked the boun- dary between Christian Europe and the growing empires of the Moslems. And these Cossacks were angry as the dark and bitter storm that, rising in the limitless wastes of the steppe, held them in its grip. For one thing it was Christmas Eve, and not a full jar of tobacco or a keg of spirits was within the palisade of the camp to lighten the hours before dawn. All rights reserved. 1 COmiclboolks S|