Adventure Magazine Cover — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

The Fresh Yank to the sky, nearly unseating the Yank, but those iron-shod heels landed square on a horse that had crawled up to the British charger’s haunch, and horse and helmeted rider went head over heels. The fallen one’s companions cut across the angle of the Yank’s flight and one came near enough to slash at him with a sword. They pounded along; a wall rose. “Here’s the finish,” thought the Yank. The wall opened, and disclosed itself as a line of cavalry. “Yeay!” howled the Yank. Germans!”’ His pursuers tried to pull up, but were unable to stop their headlong rush. A wave of khaki poured forward, two helmets went down, and the Yank’s horse came to a bumping halt. When the Yank had re- covered himself, he thrust his feet into the stirrup leathers over the stirrups, adjusted his reins, and then, feeling’ secure once more, he turned about to face his pursuers. There was one gray-clad figure in front of him, his hands in the air, and a trooper snatching his sword out of his hand, and to the left a little, a kind of swirl of movement that broke, as the Yank watched it, into a group of British cavalry, whose swords no longer gleamed, and who were quieting their shying horses and looking at something on the ground that the Yank could not see. ‘Ere, lad,” called some one to the Yank. “The colonel wants to see you.” The Yank followed his guide. A white- mustached, red-faced man that looked as if he had stepped bodily from the pages of Punch, put his glass in his eye and .ad- dressed the Yank. “Are you the man that went charging through here? Where did those Germans come from? Did you see their main body?” His eye noted the round brooch-like badge on the Yank’s cap. ‘From the Bays, eh? Any of your lot left alive?”’ “There are some, sir. They’re fighting dismounted. I ran into a bunch of wagons out there.” ‘“‘Wagons, eh? Let’s to work!” The cavalry began to move forward again. The Yank fell back into the ranks and seized the moment to adjust his stirrup leathers. The British were in line, moving at the walk, but they increased the gait to a trot before the Yank had finished his task, so that he had to fix the last buckle, bouncing about like a cork. Finally the job ‘‘Germans! 2! was done, and he thrust his feet home in the stirrups with considerable satisfaction. “Now,” he muttered, “let ’em come on!”’ fey CHE flank of the advance secured aa & touch with the enemy first. There @ was shouting, some rifle fire, and considerable sound as of hammering on wood. Before the Yank had time to de- cide what this last noise was, he found his part of the line beginning to canter. As he looked down the line, he could see men rising in their stirrups and slashing at some invisible objects. Then they arrived at the wagons again. It had seemed, the first time that the Yank had struck those carts, that there were Only a few of them, but this time, after he had gone down a lane between the wagons, he found that he was very nearly lost. A terrific din arose. Horses plunged, axles squealed, men shouted, rifles and pis- tols cracked with machine-like rapidity. The British charged about, singly, in pairs, and in groups, for the units had been broken up by the wagons, and had lost all touch with each other. “Now, let’s wait a minute,” said the Yank to himself. ‘I don’t want to get captured. Let’s gather a few friends.” He tried to pull up, but his horse would have none of it. There was a knot of Brit- ish troopers in the next lane, yelling and stabbing, and the Yank’s horse wanted to stay with hiscompanions. The Yank looked behind him. A trooper was engaged in a duel with the driver of one of the German lead teams. The German, who of course rode the nigh horse of the team, was handicapped be- cause he could not reach the Britisher over the off horse, and when the Britisher worked his own mount around to the nigh side of the team, the German had to thrust and parry across his body, thus losing about a foot of thrusting length. “That Hun is a goner,” thought the Yank, but at that second a rifle barrel pro- truded from the back of a wagon in the op- posite rank. Bang! The Yank jerked on one rein with all his strength, and literally hauled the charger’s head around. The lane was narrow and by the time he had extricated himself and his mount from the horse of a lead team into which he swung them, he noticed two E@ DOOK 1 @)