Adventure Magazine Cover, November 10, 1924 — page 55: what you’re looking at

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

The Casual’s Return Suddenly, as he turned a corner around an empty car, he heard a clamor of voices, undertones, whispers, curses, hurried direc- tions, orders, recriminations and a horrible dripping, splashing sound that curdled his blood. At the same time some watcher must have caught sight of him. The ser- geant was very near the outer wall of the yard and an arc light from the street out- side shone in and had discovered him to an unseen watcher. There was a hurried scramble of feet, mutters of alarm and many fleeing men. “Halt!” cried the sergeant. ‘Halt, or T’ll fire!” The men fled like leaves before the gale. They were gone and the sound of their running feet was lost before the sergeant could make a move toward their apprehen- sion. The dripping sound continued, in- deed it was louder. The sergeant ducked under a car, crawled across the tracks on his hands and knees and stood up. Things were easily visible here. The arc light from the street shone down bright- ly. Stretching up toward the sky, arching its great back like some prehistoric beast, was a huge barrel, a hogshead many times Overgrown, a barrel that was bigger than any watertank Eadie had ever seen. This mastodon among barrels lay upon its side on a flat car. were the words: “R, Dumont et Fils, Medoc.” ’ But this beast had been wounded, he bled terribly. Streams of dark liquid spouted from his side and ran over the edge of the flat car in little waterfalls. There was a heavy smell of crushed grapes in the air. Eadie thrust an inquisitive finger into one of those dark fountains, then carried the finger to his nose. Wine. So this was a tank car, for the transportation of wine. Trust the American soldier to smell it out. They. had discovered the car, rallied to it in great numbers, blown ‘holes in it with their 45’s and caught its blood with tin hats, mess cups, canteens and G. I. buckets. All this Eadie could read in the ragged edges of the holes in the great barrel, the shots and the débris of hasty flight. The men had, despite their surprize and retreat, probably carried off enough to keep them- selves flaming like light-houses for the rest of the trip. ) Then Eadie had a bright thought, an Upon its flank, dimly seen, . 93: inspiration, a stroke of genius. There would be trouble when the French rail- road authorities found their barrel full of lead and empty of wine, but the sergeant thought little of that. He hurried back to his guard. “Jake, come here,” he cried. ‘You circulate around those cars and tell every one that I’ve gone to tell the French com- missatre about the tank car being shot up, and that any one that’s caught out of the cars will be picked up by the French and accused of doing it. They better all be asleep when I come back with the Frog officer. I want to show him we didn’t have a man awake and that of course we couldn’t steal his wine.” The scheme worked. Eadie took a run around the station and when he returned the cars were wrapped in thick silence. He poked his head into every compartment, but found no man who did not counterfeit sleep. So quiet and calm were they that after an hour or two he relieved the guard, risking the officer’s wrath for doing so, and went to sleep himself, parked on the run- ning board of a car, to wait until the officer should return, or daylight come. Spe A ROUGH hand brought Eadie to unw Consciousness. It was a gray dawn, one that presaged rain. A very small Frenchman, wrapped in an old regu- lation blue overcoat and wearing what had once been a kepi, was shaking the sergeant vigorously. , “What’s the matter?” asked Eadie, pry- ing his eyelids apart with his fingers. “Eh!” cried the Frenchman. ‘“Levez donc!”’ at the same time making lifting mo- tions with both hands. “Quelle heure, my lizard?”’ asked the sergeant. “Four,” answered the other, “you have but ten minutes. Hurry. It is the hour of departure.” ‘Eh, well,” said the sergeant, yawning, “one but needs to attach the cars to the train.” : “‘Nononononono!” cried the little Frog. “The cars rest here. It is the soldiers who must take yet another train.” “Flame of my heart!” howled the ser- geant. ‘Who told you? You speak of impossibilities.”’ 2 — ‘‘Voict Pordre,” said the other, displaying A pink slip of paper. Comicbook (© =