Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 63: what you’re looking at

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

The Snow Driver He drew back the hood from the girl’s face and felt for the pulse in her throat. He could feel nothing through the numb- ness of his fingers. “Fire,” he muttered. ‘‘We must have a fire. be Helped by Kyrger, he plowed his way to the bundle in the tree and took from it a powder horn and steel and fimt. Then, cuttmg off a length of the Samoyed’s loosely woven rope, he untwisted the hemp: strands. Gathering a double handful of dead twigs from the firs, he went back to the spot kept clear of snow by the felt and Building a smal mound of twigs and pine needles, he poured a little powder from the horn and fell to striking the steel against the flint stone. Presently a spark flew into the powder grains and flared up, eating into the dead twigs and the hemp strands. Kyrger, who had watched with interest, now brought larger twigs and coaxed the tiny flame into @ crackling blaze. To this branches were added until the fire glowed warmly. The heat only served to quicken the girl’s heavy breathing, until Fhorne chafed her wrists and throat with snow. After a while her eyes flickered, and she sighed. A kind of smile touched her lips, bringing the semblance of life back into her again. He himself ached in every joint and his vision played queer fricks. He fancied that the whole sky over the sea was on fire. Kyrger had anticipated his need, and brought frezen meat, which he placed on flat rocks in the fire. A savory odor spread into the air, and, as if roused by this sum- mons, Peter Palmer dragged himself out of his white mausoleum and crouched down by the fire. Thorne noticed with weary surprize that the stout boatswain was weeping. Tears trickled down his hollow cheeks, but he said no word. He kept his eyes frxed on the meat until Thorne had forced a piece between the girl’s teeth and induced her to chew and swallow it. When Joan would eat no more the three men fell on the meat and divided what re- mained between them. Then Peter tight- ened his belt and looked around him slowly. “T said truth,” he grunted at length. “This maiden was a sea troll; the land is not her place. By black arts she hath fetched 45 us to the very portal of wh‘<h is plain- ly to: be seen over yonder.’”” Thorne looked over his shoulder and rubbed his eyes. What he had’ taken for a fantasy was still visible: A light cloud arched over the northern horizon: and from this cloud fiery streamers stretched to the zenith. Up and down these streamers passed a radiance, now purple, now yellow, but always flickering up to: an Hmmense height where it vanished in a kind of must. As: Fhorne watched, the radiance van- ished, to reappear almost instantly in a different form. Gigantic, glowing pillars seemed now to rise from the dark horizon to the regions of outer space. This glow palpitated and grew stronger until his eyes ached. The pillars were columms of fire, towering over their heads, but giving out no heat. Then the fiery portals, that had so wrought upon Peter’s fancy, vanished and © the elusive streamers sprang into being again. “T have sailed the seas of the earth,” said the shipman solemnly, ‘“‘and I have seen the water rise up into pillars that reached to the sky. I’ve clapped my deadlights on the serpent that the Good Book names Leviathan, daddle me else.. I’vé seen fishes fly through the air, off Madagascar, it were. But yonder gate in the sky is the gate of Satan’s do-minions.” Having relieved his mind of this augury, he fell into a troubled sleep. Somewhere in the lurid darkness a tree trunk cracked sharply, and Thorne heard far inland the howling of a wolf pack, coursing the hard snow on the heels of the storm. Hunched. close to the fire that warmed them into life, he wondered what the morrow might bring. THE armiger admitted to Joan that ' they must have heavier garments, if they were to enter the unknown world to the east. The girl labored with Kyrger im sewing rude coats out of the furs for the two men to wear. had the supple gut preserved by the Samoyed, and for needle a bit of whale- bone rubbed into the desired shape. Meanwhile Kyrger got out what ap-_ peared to be a pair of great wooden skates, nearly two ells long and as wide as the palm of his hand, with strips of reindeer skin fixed to the under side. CORnnICLOO For thread she. S (©