Adventure Magazine Cover — page 146: what you’re looking at

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

we Tal > meeson it Saee + vo ae SN te ne RSS Eo Nat. Soret S ~- Se 4 : » Pr tse pe ty ea Ne a ec te ee Pe ee ee - ef at Pas ee 2 ae * ° c 5 144 very difficult. The leg did not hurt so much now, but it seemed to weigh intolerably. Every little obstruction that yesterday would have passed unnoticed now had to be negotiated with much thought and care; a donga that he could have stepped over became an abyss. Once, when the branch came out of his improvised crutch, he came down on the broken leg with his full weight. It took him an hour to reach the water- hole, and he was pretty well exhausted. But the pool was there all right, and he soaked his bandaged leg in it and drank his fill, Then he rested for a while, till the heat of the rocks warned him that the sun was mounting, and time was slipping past. First he went through the small pack he had been carrying. Usually the partners traveled with a couple of donkeys, but he had meant to make good time on this trip, and had elected to bear his own load. Or perhaps it had been merely a species of spite, born of his somber rage against Du Plessis. He wanted to show what he could do. But the pack now was out of the ques- tion. Regretfully he discarded his two old busk blankets, his small stock of flour, his Spare pair of boots and the rest of his meager kit; all he kept was a little packet of tea and a piece of fat bacon. Those for provisions, and then his water-bottle, as full as possible. By the time he had finished his prepara- tions it was perhaps eight o’clock, and the sun shone down fiercely on a world rapidly yielding up every trace of the morning’s sweetness. With his old pipe clamped firmly in his jaws, McCall set out on what he had a shrewd suspicion was to be his last trek. He knew well enough the penalty for dis- ablement in the wild, but he was going to put up a big fight. Twenty miles ; TO THE uninitiated the bush- veld, looks flat or at most undulat- ing, with here and there a kopje to serve a most useful purpose as a Sloridiark. The hunter knows that it is rough and much cut up with dongas, lit- tered with loose stones here and there, most difficult for a man desiring to steer a straight course. McCall, crippled as he was, found it a nightmare, a long drawn out agony of heartbreaking effort, of racking pain, be- neath the pitiless glare of a tropic sun. Fre- quently his improvised crutch gave way, and Adventure he would fall headlong; constantly he had to make wide detours to find a possible way across a donga; the strain of his unnatural progress told heavily on even his tough muscles, and he was bathed in perspiration. But he pressed on. He lost all count of time, and was con- scious only of the agony in his leg and the blistering heat of the sun. He had thought no sun in Africa could bother his accustomed hide, but this was outrageous—a sun such as he had never experienced. He had fre- quent recourse to his water-bottle, and be- gan to mutter and talk to himself as he crawled along. He was surprized that it was still daylight, for he had been walking so many hours; and yet the sun was still high, and its heat unabated. Vaguely he became aware of movement in the long grass to his left—movement of which his trained instincts gave him warn- ing, though he was not aware of the reason. With a shock he came back to realities, and sitting down on a convenient rock, hastily strove to pull the stick out of his carbine. The movement in the grass had ceased, but the wood was jammed. He dare not exert any sidewise pressure, for if the end broke off he could never get it out. Curious, how it had slipped out so often as he walked, and now, just at the wrong moment, it jammed. With an exclamation of impatience he put down the carbine and picked up a frag- ment of stone. With a shout of startling vigor he flung this as far as he could toward the place where he had seen the movement in the grass. After all, in the wild, attack was the surest means of defense, and he had to do something. A large striped hyena broke cover, loping away unhurriedly, look- ing back over its shoulder. With a sudden wrench McCall got the stick out of the barrel of his carbine, slipped in a cartridge and fired. The beast broke into a clumsy, agitated gallop and soon vanished from sight. ‘““A hyena—and in broad daylight!” Mce- Call muttered. “They must have me marked down all right. Fair game, just because I go along like a crab. The filthy brute! Anything that’s wounded and help- less. But I reckon I’ve still got a kick or two left.” He broke off abruptly as a shadow swept across the ground before him, and looked up much as a rabbit might look when the sun sends warning of the approach of the Gomichbooks.co