Adventure Magazine Cover — page 120: what you’re looking at

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

118 At last he whirled upon them, his eyes blazing. “There you are, chummies,” he shouted. ‘‘There’s the layout. Now call me a ruddy liar if you want to!” The words he had spoken to Cole in Portsmouth Square flashed back to the ex- sergeant. “Gold! Slathers of it! Spattered all over the reef! Bright as brass in the sun!’ There it was with the level rays of the sunrise fair upon it. A hill of siliceous sinter, flinty, almost colorless, the output of a geyser in some remote age. The sloping face of it was fully two hundred feet in height and near it were similar formations of lesser proportion. They did not look at these. They saw only the gleams of gold, chafed bright by wind-carried sand, not in veins but spattered, in such _ irregular pattern as mud would make flung at a wall. Specks here and spots as large as a thumb nail, zigzags and streaks an inch wide, glit- tering like polished brass, indeed, but gold, soft to the knife-blade. A fortune incalculable! A miniature mount of Midas! The glamour of gold was on them as they dug at the stuff, laughed and shouted and hefted the heavy fragments they dug out in the palms of their hands. Perro romped between them, barking furiously. “‘Now call me a ruddy liar!” cried Rey- nolds again and again. His excitement was the reaction from the responsibility under which he had been laboring. “Bring on your airship,” he shouted. “Crack the nut, chummies, and pick out the meat.” Cole slapped him on the back and Petrie, too weak for such demonstration, grinned ecstatically. They turned to go back to the cave for their tools. They had won. All they had to do was to cash in. ‘Bail up!’ THE command was emphasized by the hum of a bullet overhead, fol- 3 lowed by another. Not twenty yards away stood five white men, three of them bearded, roughly clad in bushranger’s clothes. The fourth—to their astonish- ment—was Mart Sievers and the fifth his pigeon, Alec. Brown, son of their Sydney landlady. The key to the solution of it all flashed through their minds. Some- Adventure how—at Sydney—some one had discovered their secret. Had _ listened — overheard, pieced together—followed. All five were armed with rifles, there was no mistaking the imperative menace of the “Bail up!” the challenge of the bush- whacking highwayman. In the background, grinning and furtive—Dango and his fellow black. They had their automatics belted on them but they were covered. For a moment they hesitated. A third bullet went through Cole’s hat, carrying it away, the rush of the bullet plainly felt through his hair, passing a deathly finger over the top of his scalp. Furious but impotent, they raised their arms. Two of the bearded men came forward with Sievers. The other stepped aside, flanking them With his rifle. Young Brown essayed to follow his example but his rifle wobbled in his hands and it was plain that he was nearly done up. His face was badly burned, his lips split and festered and he limped when he walked. The man who seemed to be the leader and spokesman swore at him. “Much obliged to the three of you,” sneered Sievers. ‘‘Here’s where I get even with you, you ——!”’ He struck out to slap Cole in the face as the latter stood defenceless, arms raised. Cole ducked the blow and kicked Sievers hard on the shin. Cursing, the bully clubbed his rifle, but the man next to him caught hisarm. “None o’ that, you larrikin,” he said. “We ain’t goin’ to swing for your private quarrels.” “You’re fussy, for a bunch of robbers,” said Cole, his dammed-up wrath overflow- ing, his eyes flaming. ‘This is our dis- covery. You'll pay for this, anyway.” The Jeader grinned, showing stumpy and yellow teeth, spitting a stream of tobacco juice before he answered, after he had taken their weapons from them. “Your discovery?” he drawled. ‘Say, Yank, how you going to prove it? You say you got here first; we say you didn’t. Our word’s better than yourn, I’m thinkin’. I don’t see no location sign. There ain’t no record of claims, but there’s goin’ to be— in our names. Not that we give a about that. ‘Time we leave here we'll take the gold along with us. We ain’t goin’ to pick it out with our jack-knives, like we MICLOOOLK C©