Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 32: what you’re looking at

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

14 he had never seen—of a danger that con- fronted the knight and his ships. Renard would never have come to Or- fordnesse unless high stakes were on the table. Evidently a blow was to be struck at Sir Hugh. But how? The Spaniard’s retainers were too few to risk a fight; more- over even the Fox would not dare do that as yet. Thorne was morally certain that Durforth was an agent of the Spaniard’s party. In that brief moment in the mist he had read guilt in the other’s startled face. Certainly Durforth had not scrupletl to use a pistol on him. Moreover this same ship’s captain had by ill chance—he cursed his father’s dotage and pride—seen the maps in the Thorne cottage. Renard would be interested in those. To gc to Sir Hugh with the tale? What proof had he to offer? It would be his word against Durforth’s, and the matter of D’Alaber’s death might be charged against him. ‘That would not serve. After a while he took up his sword. Here was no matter for words. Two attempts had been made on his life, and he intended to make the third move. He would go among the voyagers, listen to what was said and, if he still suspected Durforth, would pick a quarrel with the man and leave the issue to the swords. CHAPTER V CATHAY HE sun was low when Master Cabot landed with his companions. The bent figure clad in dark velvets was unmis- takable; the forked white beard had not its like in England. With Sir Hugh, a tall man, florid of face, Cabot drove off to the manor house, leaving Richard Chancellor, master of the Edward, and Durforth of the smallest vessel, the Confidentia, to sup at the tavern. This was by reason that three of the mariners on the ships had fallen ill and must be put ashore. Chancellor, a young gentleman, simply clad in gray broadcloth, without a hat on his tawny curls, made plea to the Orfordnesse loiterers to embark in the stead of the sick shipment; but no one volunteered. Thorne waited until Chancellor, Durforth and his father had taken their seats at the Adventure long table in the public room, then seated himself at the far end where they could not see him for the Orfordnesse merchants that crowded to places between. And, while he did full justice to Fulke’s mutton and pastry, he listened to the talk, which was all of the voyage. “°Tis clear,” observed old Master Thorne, ‘“‘that a northwest passage to Cathay does not exist—at least where we hoped to find it. The Spaniard, Balboa, has sighted the ocean that lies beyond America. Yet no passage by water hath opened out.” “So,” demanded a merchant, “Sir Hugh ventures to seek it in the northeast?” “Master Cabot,’”’ put in Durforth with a slight smile, ‘doth believe that the open sea extends north of the Easterling* coast to Cathay.” The men of Orfordnesse stared at him in amazement. At rare intervals they had seen the small, single-masted vessels of the Easterlings driven on the coast by a tem- pest, or ‘come to trade cod and whale oil. These dwarfs—for the men from the edge of the known world were no taller than an Englishman’s armpit—were dressed al- ways in fish skins and pelts of beasts. It was said of them that they possessed the power of sorcery, of putting a blight on cattle, of carrying off maidens unresisting, by the lure of their slant eyes. They could foretell the future, and in their own country they rode from place to place on the back of wild deer, called reindeer. Between this land of the Easterlings and the pole lay the stretch of water called the Ice Sea. But to sail up, beyond the edge of the known world, into this Ice Sea to seek Cathay! A red-bearded merchant, who had once been blown up to the Shetlands, smiled knowingly. , “Nay, my lords, you embark upon a fantasy! For a hundred and fifty leagues the coast of Norway is a desert land. And know that off this coast there lies a mighty indraught or whirlpool of waters.”’ ‘““Malestrand,”’ assented another. “So men call it. The currents of all the seas do tend to Malestrand, and there are engulfed with a fearful roaring and rack, whirling down to the depths.”’ “°Tis said,’ put in the tavern keeper who had lent his ear to the talk, “that *Easterlings—Lapps, Finns and Tatars. GOMIGIOO (©