Adventure Magazine Cover — page 165: what you’re looking at

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

The Way of Sinners I am slain carrying out that purpose, it is well.”’ There was a long silence, while the fire crackled merrily, absorbed in its own affairs. “Aye,” says Anita at last. ““Good-by.” She swung about, and our eyes met again; but, though some power seemed to be push- ing us toward another embrace, we did not move. “‘Good-by,” says she; and with that I broke from the room running; ran across the courtyard without one glance back at the windows at which (I knew) the white form of my lady would be standing limned against the red glow of the fire; and entered the turret pale and breathless. Benedetto was there, and four arquebus men; the knot of the rope was fast to a ring in the wall, and its yellow length, sagging across the room in the red light of the torches, disappeared through the narrow window into the darkness without. “The guard below is not to be seen,”’ says Benedetto dully, while the arquebusiers saluted. ‘“‘If it is there, it hath no fire.” “Tf it hath no fire, then I can evade it,”’ saysI. “Is the rope fast?” “We have all pulled at it, without causing it to stir,” says Benedetto. ‘Hath the Captain considered the matter of a horse?” “Ttaly is full of them,” says I, “and one of my pockets is full of gold. Now it is time my lungs were full of night air— Put out those torches; I would spare you the pain, and any watchers the pleasure, of seeing me go. A rivederct, Benedetto.” The torches had been crushed out on the earth floor ere he answered; and then his voice, from the darkness, sounded choked. “Farewell, my Captain,” says he; I was on the window-ledge by this time, with little breath left from the effort of squeezing my shoulders through the aperture. “That’s a sad word, Lieutenant,” I gasped. “Count not on command—so— easily. Ah!” I was out, hanging with both hands to the rope above that black and enemy-filled abyss; happy because (though I did not know it at the time) my mind was too full of this peril, to be turning inward on itself. I climbed down the swinging thread with as much pain, almost, as if I had been climbing up it; four hands breadths at a time, until my arms ached abominably, 159 and more when I rested than when I con- tinued. The rope seemed interminable; the night darker and more windy than any I had known; but at last, as I swung, my foot struck a jagged point of rock which I knew must be part of the rubble at the foot of the cliff; a moment later I was kneeling on the boulder; and after some stumbling across rough stones, my feet felt the blessed con- tact of grass. Above me, the castle towered black against the star-pricked sky; black with a faint halo of rose from the braziers on the three defended walls. Across the plain, the night wind moaned, and the grass under my feet was soaked in dew. For a moment I stood there, staring up at the stronghold I had left; and then, from far away to the right, I heard the drwm-drum-drum of a horse’s hoofs, galloping. Evidently, the patrol; my first instinct was to crouch in among the rocks of the cliff’s base, and wait until it should have passed; this was, no doubt, a thought born of the seductive habit, new to me, of fighting from behind defenses; it did not last long. For on its heels came the remembrance that before all, I needed a horse, and the realization that if I could come by the animal now ap- proaching, the duration of my absence from Anita would be shortened by a night at least. This in mind, I moved carefully in the direction from which the horseman was approaching, straining my eyes into the darkness for sight of him, and praying, as well as I could with my breath held, that he would observe the custom of the patrols, and abate his pace at the foot of the cliff. He rounded a corner of the rock, and I heard him speak to his mount, as he pulled it to a walk; but at this point did my luck desert me. There was an excess of zeal in the arquebusiers I had left in the turret; and I suppose Benedetto, who should have known better than to exceed orders, was anxious for me; at any rate, just as the rider was within rushing distance of me, out from the window far above leaped four jets of flame, and, a moment later, four heavy re- ports; while one ball hissed past my head, and other three thudded into the ground. The fools above had heard the noise of the patrol, even as I had, and the fire had been intended, certes, to distract attention from me, whom they supposed to be still on the rope; instead of which, it nearly cost me my COmiclboooks.c©