Adventure Magazine Cover — page 137: what you’re looking at

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

Go-Fever behind their shields, entirely concealed save for the waving cockatoo plumes~as they gazed toward the cave. They took ad- vantage of every clump of grass that grew sparsely about the crags and worked up to within a hundred and fifty yards. Every now and then they gave yells that might have been meant for taunts or were in- tended to foment themselves up to a rush. “Fire over their heads,” said Cole quietly. “It may scatter them.” The scheme failed to stop them. Perhaps the humming bullets and the bark of the rifles meant nothing to them as long as immediate disaster did not follow. They were too far apart for any contagious fear. And they had already conquered the men who used the fire sticks. Their savage strategy was the best possible. Coming in with those wild leaps, spring- ing from side to side, they were difficult targets at the best. Even with direct hits only a few could be knocked over before the rest rushed the cave and, with their tre- mendous odds, settled the matter in hand- to-hand combat. Morbora—they had let him take his weapons—was gray with fear. ‘‘Now they come,” he said. ‘“Too many.” The tall warrior had yelled again and the charge was on. They came rushing with incredible speed, bounding along in open order that gradually closed in as they neared the crags, halting to fling spears that came whizzing, actually reaching the cave; a few of them, impelled by the throwing sticks, passing into the interior, others rattling against the rocks, while boomerangs glided with even better aim, turning in their flight, drumming as they struck the cliff; the howling mob coming on in a frenzy of kill- ing, their eyes and teeth flashing, leaping . and shouting like fiends, closer—closer! It was a hazard to stand in the mouth of the cave. Cole took it, Reynolds beside him with a flaring torch of resinous wood. A boomerang struck Cole in the left shoul- der as he drew’back his arm and a spear passed through his shirt, grazing his flesh. It had been imperative to get them within throwing range and the wait set success or failure on a single chance. If the dynamite failed to stop them The half-stick flew sputtering through the air. A soaring boomerang collided with it as it curved downward and it exploded fairly over the closing mob with a deafening 135 roar and a flare of gas that.was yellow in the sunlight amid a cloud of heavy yellow vapor. Under it blacks were flung prostrate and more halted with strenuous efforts like viciously reined-in horses. Cole took a sec- ond bomb, lit the split fuse from Reynolds’ torch and flung it after the first. This time it struck the ground and sand flew high into the air with the flash and thunder of the detonation that sent the air back so hard into the cave mouth that Cole and Reynolds went staggering back, daz- zled, fogged by the smoke and dust. When they could see clearly again the tribe was in full and frantic flight. Weapons and shields had been tossed aside. Painted figures were racing for the spinifex, plunging through grass clumps in their terror, some limping, others falling and clawing ‘them- selves along on their bellies. Cole sent a third shot rocketing and it burst overhead as if a bolt of lightning had fallen. He was a Jove flinging thunder- bolts, a devil-god of devil-gods! Morbora was cowering on the ground, prostrate. There were a dozen prostrate blacks within twenty yards of the cave. Some lay still, the life shattered out of them, others writhed feebly. It was slaughter, sickening but necessary and forever the desert tribes would be convinced that the white men had made a league with Kvingan and Bunyip. From then on the caves were to be a place accursed. IT WAS two weeks later when they arrived at the torrent in the gorge. The raft was still there, drawn up on the shelf of rock where they had left it, the rope gone, chafed away, though it would have been of no use to them, fastened as it was to the opposite bank. But they had brought tough vines from the edge of the snake swamp and they hauled the raft up-stream and repeated their crossing to the wonderment of Morbora. The black might not be civilized but he was effectually tamed, less among these wizards, in his own eyes, far less than Perro. He and Dangoran had brought Sievers and his party by another route far up the head of the gorge. The bushwhackers had forced their service as guides into the dreaded desert at the muzzles of guns. A mountain of suttongo would not otherwise have made them take the risk, Morbora swore. Not all the suttongo and shirshi in DOOLK (C@ inn