Adventure Magazine Cover — page 166: what you’re looking at

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

160 life. For the rider, startled, as was his horse, by this sudden attack, cursed, wrenched on his bridle, drove home his spurs, and launched his horse full speed and rearing in whatever direction God willed— which happened to be straight toward me. I flung myself on the earth to escape the kicking out of my brains; my hands I flung up blindly to ward off the hoofs that were shaking the ground on which I lay; I felt one of my hands grasp something hard and fast-moving; and then there came a fright- ful crashing thud, and an oath that turned into a groan. The horse had fallen; by Heaven-sent chance, I had caught one of his fore-legs and made him stumble. In the darkness I could hear his master, clanking in armor and groaning and swearing by turns, dragging out the leg which had been entrapped when the brute fell. Another moment, and the man was on his feet, limping around to the animal’s head to raise him; and in another moment I was at the man’s throat with my bare hands. He was too surprized to offer much re- sistance; I felled him at the first attack; and, as he writhed on the ground, exercised a trick taught me by poor Uccello, who for sport had been accustomed to fight strong men of the command with his fists in the English fashion; doubling up his hands, and striking with the bones of his knuckles. He had found, and had explained to me, that whereas most blows do but produce a bruise and discoloration, one under the chin and a little to the right, will rob a man ‘of consciousness for a half-hour or so; and it was this blow, accordingly, that I dealt the patrol, who forthwith gasped, drew up his legs, and lay as if I had killed him. I rose (the horse had meantime got to his feet) and listened. There was no more sound of galloping; this man had been sent forth alone; and I remember that in the back of my brain I wondered what devil- ment the duke might have in mind, thus to be economizing on his patrols. A matter of more import to me then, however, was whether the horse I had captured was still sound in his bones; which, rendering thanks to God, I found was the case; he was fright- ened and breathing hard (the only sound in the stillness) but he was unhurt, and per- fectly fresh; so much so, that it was only after persuasion that I could mount him. There were pistolets in holsters to either F. R. Buckley side of the saddle, too; there was bread, and some cheese to boot, in one saddle-bag, and a little flask of wine in the other; I chuckled with a child’s delight at these troves. ‘Avanti’ I cried quite loudly, smacking the horse on the neck; he stepped off; and five minutes later out of chance of pursuit from the camp, I was flying through air that blew in my face at the pace of the gallop, toward Costecaldo. T WAS destined that thereafter I should rise very high on thewings of fame and of triumph, as humanity considers height, and as it understands fame and tri- umph; yet, looking back over the rising and falling road of my life, I do plainly perceive that it was now, on this lonely ride to humil- lation, that I ascended the uplands of exis- tence; now, and now alone, that my head was so far raised above earth, as to breathe of the keen, ecstatic atmosphere of the stars. At the beginning of my journey, Bene- detto’s opinion, joined to my own doubts as to this desertion of my command, had op- pressed my spirit with a load of doubt; fur- thermore, I was sad at the leaving of Anita, and apprehensive of the coming audience with Scarlatti; but as the night changed slowly into dawn, so did these black moods, swirling in my mind, fuse and transmute themselves by degrees into a strange joy. Of a sudden, my heart bounded; meseemed I was master of the world. Thad Anita; not merely in the flesh, but in the mind, in the spirit; not for this life alone, but for eternity; what then, mattered death? It was in her eyes alone that I should suc- ceed or fail; what, then, were to me the judg- ments of Benedetto, of Matteo Scarlatti, or of the stupid world at large? I mocked myself of them and of it; for now I had my Own universe complete; from which I could sally forth when the need appeared, as it did now; but into which the laws of the common earth could not pursue me. Since I had my mate and my kingdom, I had every- thing to gain, and nothing to lose; and clearly did I see that against me, no earth- ling (like Matteo Scarlatti) bound by laws which others had made for their own pro- tection, could long endure. So for all my mud-splashed leather and for all my lathered horse, it was with the mind of an emperor on progress through his own domain, that I came to the first sentry of Scarlatti’s camp; and it was in haughty COMICOookSs Cc (C© 5}