Adventure Magazine Cover — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

2 Adventure : “Eh—eh!” The sotntk who had brought in the men shook his head. ‘Such a night. The forest yonder is snapping its fingers, like the bones of the dead. It is good that we are not m the open.” “Aye, so,” muttered another, setting his back to the wind, ‘‘because there are céf- tamly devils abroad in the air. I could smell witches’ oil, where I stood. And a dwarf came up from behind a log and pulled my coat, crying, just like a child in ain: 33 “Evil times,” assented a warrior who lacked a coat and leaned his spear against his shoulder to hold his fists the closer to the blaze. ‘“Tomorrow és “Tomorrow,” broke in the captain curtly, “is a holy day, and the vampires and hob- gobs will all bivouack under the earth.” “TI heard a maiden’s voice singing in the tree tops, and her dark hair flew over my head like this smoke. If we had a priest in the camp such things would not be, but we have no priest.” ‘‘Ai-a,” assented the man without a coat, ‘‘our fathers, the elders, hold council in the church. Eh, they can not sprinkle us with holy water. Our batko, the priest, went down the river to shrive a sick wench. A Turkish patrol found him and sent him back “ “With the soles of his feet cut off,”’ nodded the officer grimly. ‘Aye, they fitted him out with a pair of red slippers. That is how they sent him back to us.”’ They glanced with one accord toward the low structure of logs and mud where the body of the priest now lay awaiting burial. Only the sotnik looked thoughtfully at a near-by hut without a light. This was the quarters of the koshevot—the chief of the Cossack war bands. And it was empty be- cause the Siech lacked a leader as well as a priest. Rurik, called the ‘‘Fair,” a one-eyed veteran of many wars, had been the chief of the Cossacks. During the hard campaign of last Summer when the frontier had been over-run by the Turks from Constantinople, Rurik had been taken prisoner. After being paraded in chains before the Sult#n he had been set to work with the other Christian slaves and a demand for ransom sent to the Siech. And the demand was for more than a king’s ransom—ten thousand gold sequins. | So the temper of the Cossacks who had remained at the Siech was savage, because in all the wide steppe of the Ukraina there was not such a sum in gold. The Jews, with a shrewd eye to the hazard, refused to lend it, though promised half the spoil taken by the Zaporoghians in their raids for the next few years. To the men of the patrols who tried to forget the gnawing of hunger in the glow of the fire, the death of the priest was a worse misfortune than the loss of their leader. But the captain knew that without a strong hand to lift the baton of a chief, the unruly clans of the steppe would never hold their own against the Moslems. So long as Rurik lived, no new koshevoi could be elected. Besides, it was unthink- able for Cossacks to forget the ties of brotherhood and leave Zaporoghians to be flayed alive by the Turks. Rather, they would consent to have the Syrian and Jew- ish merchants spit upon their mustaches. Nothing remained for them but to find the ten thousand pieces of gold. _Con- stantmople was too strong to attack, and as for ventures upon the seas—the Turks and the Barbary beys were masters there. “We can not ransom the koshevoi,’”’ the captain mused, “‘yet if we do not keep faith with our father, all the warriors of the world will point at us and say there is no faith in the brotherhood of the Cossacks. And how is that to be endured?”’ ‘Easier if we had vodka and gruel,” said mournfully the man who lacked a coat. “Or if the batko were here to start a carol. Eh, he had such a fine throat—like a brass funnel it was, for the wine that went down and the songs that came up.” They threw more wood on the fire and pressed closer moodily, leaning on their spears, for no one wished to be the first to break away to a dark shed to try to sleep upon an empty stomach this Christmas Eve. “If we had an ataman—a colonel like Khlit of the Curved Saber,’’ muttered the sotnutk, “who could open up a road for us to follow! By Saint Nicholas, we would find a ransom and weigh it out in blood.” ‘It was otherwise in those days,”’ nodded a veteran who had traveled long roads with Khlit and Rurik. “Now the brothers do nothing but chew sunflower seeds, and when they hear that noble Cossacks are burned alive by the Turks * “To the with you!” growled the captain. © COMmMicloo (©