Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 18, 1928 — page 78: what you’re looking at

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

| to tell us!” 876 Alice was gesturing toward the sky. I turned. Off there in the starlight, in the direction we had come, was a lone bird fly- ing. In a moment I could see its wings. Sonya called something; and added to Alice, “ A girl arriving from Kalima.”’ The bird swooped in a great descending arc, a gray-white bird like those which had drawn our platform. Mounted upon its back was the figure of a girl, her arms clinging about its neck. It soared with poised wings; descended to the beach near us. The girl leaped to the sand; she called: “Sonya! Sonya!” They talked in their own language; then Sonya whirled to me. Her face had gone white. “ Alta—this girl—lives very near my Uncle Ren’s house in Kalima. I do not mean our home—I mean that other house of his where you were living. Alta went there to see me.” She was talking swiftly; Alice and Do- lores drew me to one side; a common feeling of disaster was upon us all. “ Alta found the door open and went in. She read my message to Uncle Ren, that we had come here to the island. She was leaving. In the street outside she heard voices; from the window she saw my Uncle Ren—with your Jim. And Lupe, blind Lupe was walking between them. They were nearly to the house. “ Then—a great black thing leaped up- on them, a giant, with a great, wabbling head, What we saw, Leonard! The Name- less Horror! It leaped upon them—and there were two or three others of its kind! They seized my uncle, and Jim, and Lupe. Lifted them up, carried them off! She— Alta—took one of my birds, and came here CHAPTER XI. A MAN, TO PLAY A MAN’S PART. STOOD a moment, transfixed with hor- Al ror. Alice’s features had become as white as Sonya’s. Dolores uttered a faint little cry, “ Jim!” “ Sonya—” I began. But she had turned to give orders to the girls. They sped ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, away. I finished, “ Sonya, you get me back, at once!” “Yes,” she agreed. “ But you can do nothing—a stranger—you cannot talk our language—”’ “IT can, with you to interpret for me—” She whirled upon Alta with other ques- tions; then back to me. ‘“ More than ever, now, I must go through with our plans. Alta says the king is not dead. But dying —he will die any moment. We must get back—” Down the beach the large platform was ready. A hundred girls or more were load- ing upon it. With a great flapping of the wings of its birds, it moved down the beach; rose into the air. It had four strings of ten birds each, with others harnessed in tandem all along its sides. Magnificently, it sailed upward, turned in a broad arc, and passed us high overhead. From everywhere now the girls were ris- ing. Another great platform, and still an- other. A score of smaller ones; and from the forest, a hundred or more individual birds, each with a lone rider. They flapped up from among the palms; circled overhead, with their numbers aug- menting until they headed. away. The first platforms were now mere blobs in the star- light. A thousand girls, I estimated, were up there in flight. We hurried to our platform. Again we were in the air. Below us still another plat- form was rising; around us, three or four mounted birds circled like a convoy. We took our place in the line and sped back to the city. The king’s castle stood upon a promon- tory where a narrow arm of the sea reached back into the city. It was a large turreted building of gray stone, built in a quadrangle, with an inner courtyard. Metallic bridges crossed the courtyard at each of its three stories. There was a flat roof banked with flow- ers, and a mound-shaped inclosure portion, like an observatory dome. Balconies en- circled the building at its second floor level. The one facing the water was broad, with a high railing. From it a narrow, steep metal stairway GEomichooks (E(0)