Amazing Stories, Vol. 2, No. 1 — page 72: what you’re looking at

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

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT The Effect of Caspak Horrors A® on the night of September ninth, the first warning came from the sentinel standing guard over his sleeping companions. A terror- stricken ery punctuated by the crack of a rifle brought Bradley, Sinclair and Brady to their feet in time to see James, with clubbed rifle, battling with a white-robed figure that hovered on wide- spread wings on a level with the Englishman’s head. As they ran, shouting, forward, it was obvious to them that the weird and terrible apparition was attempting to seize James; but when it saw the others coming to his rescue, it desisted, flapping rapidly upward and away, its long, ragged wings giving forth the peculiarly dismal notes which al- ways characterized the sound of its flying. Bradley fired at the vanishing menacer of their peace and safety; but whether he scored a hit or not, none could tell, though, following the shot, there was wafted back to them the same piercing wail that had on other occasions frozen their mar- row. Then they turned toward James, who lay face downward upon the ground, trembling as with ague. For a time he could not even speak, but at last regained sufficient composure to tell them how the thing must have swooped silently upon him from above and behind as the first premonition of danger he had received was when the long, claw- like fingers had clutched him beneath either arm. In the mélée his rifle had been discharged and he had broken away at the same instant and turned to defend himself with the butt. The rest they had seen. From that instant James was an absolutely broken man. He maintained with shaking lips that his doom was sealed, that the thing had marked him for its own, and that he was as good as dead, nor could any amount of argument or raillery con- vince him to the contrary. He had seen Tippet marked and claimed, and now he had been marked. Nor were his constant reiterations of this belief without effect upon the rest of the party. Even Bradley felt depressed, though for the sake of the others he managed to hide it beneath a show of confidence he was far from feeling. And on the following day William James was killed by a saber-tooth tiger—September 13, 1916. Beneath a jarrah tree on the stony plateau on the northern edge of the Sto-lu country in the land that Time forgot, he lies in a lonely grave marked by a rough headstone. Southward from his grave marched three grim and silent men. To the best of Bradley’s reckoning they were some twenty-five miles north of Fort Dinosaur, and that they might reach the fort on the following day, they plodded on until darkness overtook them. With comparative safety fifteen miles away, they made camp at last; but there was no singing now and no joking. In the bottom of his heart each prayed that they might come safely through just this night, for they knew that during the morrow they would make the final stretch, yet the nerves of each were taut with strained antici- pation of what gruesome thing might flap down upon them from the black sky, marking another #3 oe for. its own. Who would be the next? : : + xe" /> - . - ~ bd 5 . es >) 4 “ a ‘—~ 4 — r.% 7 7 es Sag ete st Ea RES ee | ee Ss ey Stef ee) CSRs ee Se Se As was their custom, they took turns at guard, each doing two hours and then arousing the next man. Brady had gone on from eight to ten, fol- lowed by Sinclair from ten to twelve, then Bradley had been awakened. Brady would stand the last guard from two to four, a8 they had determined to start the moment that it became light enough: to insure comparative safety upon the trail. The snapping of a twig aroused Brady out of a dead sleep, and as he opened his eyes, he saw that it was broad daylight and that at twenty paces from him stood a huge lion. As the man sprang to his feet, his rifle ready in his hand, Sinclair awoke and took in the scene in a single swift glance. The fire was out and Bradley was nowhere in sight. For a long moment the lion and the men eyed one another. The latter had no mind to fire if the beast minded its own affairs—they were only too glad to let it go its way if it would ; but the lion was of a different mind. Suddenly the long tail snapped stiffly erect, and as though it had been attached to two trigger fi- gers the two rifles spoke in unison, for both men knew this signal only too well—the immediate fore- runner of a deadly charge. As the brute’s head had been raised, his spine had not been visible; and so they did what they had learned by long experience was best to do. Each covered a front leg, and as the tail snapped. aloft, fired. With a hideous roar the mighty flesh-eater lurched for- ward to the ground with both front legs broken. It was an easy accomplishment in the instant be- fore the beast charged—after, it would have been well-nigh an impossible feat. Brady stepped close in and finished him with a shot in the base of the brain lest his terrific roaring should attract his mate or others of their kind. Then the two men turned and looked at one an- other. “Where is Lieutenant Bradley?” asked Sin- clair. They walked to the fire. Only a few smoking embers remained. A few feet away lay Bradley’s rifle. There was no evidence of a struggle. The two men circled about the camp twice and on the last lap Brady stooped and picked up an object which had lain about ten yards beyond the fire—it was Bradley’s cap. Again the two looked question- ingly at one another, and then, simultaneously, both pairs of eyes swung upward and searched the sky. A moment later Brady was examining the ground about the spot where Bradley’s cap had lain. It was one of those little barren, sandy stretches that they had found only upon this stony plateau. Brady’s own footsteps showed as plainly as black ink upon white paper; but his was the only foot that had marred the smooth, windswept surface— there was no sign that Bradley had crossed the spot upon the surface of the ground, and yet his cap lay well toward the center of it. Fort Dinosaur Again REAKFASTLESS and with shaken nerves the two survivors plunged madly into the long day’s march. Both were strong, courageous, resourceful men; but each had reached the limit of human nerve endurance and each felt that he would rather die than spend another night in the hideous open of that sight land. Vivid in the mind of each | “comicbooks: mene - b> 9a: “ae a 71 \ .