Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 69: what you’re looking at

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

The Snow Driver opened the door with a thrust of his foot. The half light of the outer cabin dis- closed Kyrger. “Ostiaks,’’ murmured the hunter, and glanced expectantly at the white man. KYRGER was as restless as one of his own reindeer in a pen. When he moved it was as if his feet slipped over thin ice. He kept one eye on the deck beams within inches of his skull. In all his life he had not stood within four walls, certainly never in the maw of a giant’s ship such as this. One that went forward against the wind. “Faith, here’s a coil,” thought the ar- miger. ‘I’d best go with him to see what’s in the wind.” But Kyrger did not wish this. Motion- ing for Thorne to watch, he began the pantomime which all primitive races under- stand. First he impersonated the voyagers, sitting around the fire. Then he jumped up and grasped at his bow, sending an im- aginary arrow at an enemy. By degrees Thorne understood, that Os- tiak tribesmen had attacked the camp; they had bound Joan and Peter and the reindeer. They had chased Kyrger nearly to the bay. A very few of the Samoyed’s words Thorne had picked up in the last months. “Sinym ka-t-uname” he asked quickly. ‘Has the little sister gone to the regions below?” By shaking his head Kyrger signified that Joan was still alive. So was Peter, thanks to the mail jerkin the shipman wore. Looking through a crack in one of the boarded-up ports, Thorne saw that the hunter had been telling the truth. On the shore a group of natives were descending toward the ice with two sledges drawn by dogs. Thorne counted eleven of them, armed with long spears and clubs. He cast a glance aloft. The battle net- tings that might have been slung from the quarterdeck rail to the forecastle, to keep out boarders, were not to be seen. Turn- ing into the roundhouse, he looked at the racks where harquebuses and crossbows should have been stacked about the butt of the mizzen. None were there, and he found time to reflect that Durforth must have taken them from the ship. But his eye fell upon a weapon more potent than any firelock, a murderer. Bolted to a pivot on the quarterdeck rail 2) was one of the light cannon that could be trained at will upon any part of the waist or foredeck. Signing to Kyrger to watch the approaching Ostiaks, he dived below, searching until he found an open keg of powder in the hold. Dipping up a good quantity in his cap, he climbed the after companion to the round- house, which served as the armory. Here he filled a small sack with bullets, nails and scraps of iron. Here, too, he found flint and steel and a slow match. Back at the gun again he rammed home the loose powder, stuffed in wadding and his shot. Then he primed the touch hole and drew Kyrger back with him to the far angle of the roundhouse where they could not be seen by the natives climbing up the starboard ladder. It did not take long to strike a spark that ignited the long fuse in his hand. Nursing the slow match he waited, listening to the chattering talk of the Ostiaks and smiling at-the sudden silence that fell when the first of them saw the dead helmsman. Then he walked out to the quarterdeck rail. Nine pairs of small, bleared eyes fast- ened on him instantly and a spear whirred through the air, striking the chest of his fur jacket. The heavy skin and the leather jerkin under it broke the bone point of the spear, which did no more than shake him. . For a second he looked down into flat, swollen faces, fringed by ragged and greasy hair. About each neck was coiled a string of something whitish, the entrails of deer, he discovered a moment later, which served the Ostiaks for food as well as ornament. Then he trained the gun and touched it off as two more spears flashed by his head. Kyrger bounded his own height from the deck when the murderer roared. Cough- ing, as the dense powder fumes swirled back, the Samoyed saw that three of the nine Ostiaks who had come over the rail were stretched on the deck and that two others were limping around in the smoke, yelling with pain. Never before had Kyrger heard a gun go off, and he was struck with the awfulness of his leader’s magic. Perceiving that he himself was without hurt, he plucked up heart and glided to the side bulwark, from which point of vantage he shot one of the natives who had remained on the ice, before they recovered from their astonishment. Meanwhile Thorne had descended to the COMiIicloo ©