Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 121: what you’re looking at

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

THE METAL MONSTER. CHAPTER XX. “Y WILL GIVE YOU PEACE.” N our concentration upon Ventnor none of us had given thought to the passing of time, nor where we were going. ‘We had stripped himto the waist, and while Ruth had massaged head and neck, Drake’s strong fingers had been kneading chest and abdomen. I had used to the ut- most my somewhat limited medical knowl- e. We had found no mark nor burn upon him, not even upon his hands over which had run the licking flame. The slightly purplish, cyanotic tinge of his skin had given way to a clear pallor; the skin was itself disquietingly cold, the blood-pressure only slightly subnormal. The pulse was more rapid, stronger; the breathing faint but regular, and with no laboring. The pupils of his eyes were contracted almost to the point. of invisibility. _ I could get no nervous reactions what- ever. I am familiar with the effects of elec- tric shock and know what to do in such cases, but Ventnor’s symptoms while sim- ilar in part, presented other features un- known to me and most puzzling. There was a passive automatism, a perplexing muscular rigidity which caused arms and legs, hands and head to remain, doll-like, in any position placed. Several times during my labors’ I had been aware of Norhala gazing down upon us; but she made no effort to help, nor did she speak. Now, my strained attention relaxing with the plain improvement in his condition, I began to receive and note impressions from without. There was a different feeling in the air, a diminution of the magnetic ten- sion; I smelled the blessed breath of trees and water. The light about us was clear and pearly, about the intensity of the moon at full. Looking back along the way we had been traveling, I saw a half mile away the ver- tical, knife-sharp edges of two facing cliffs, the gap between them a mile or more wide. Through them we must have passed, for beyond were the radiant mists of the pit of the city, and through this precipitous 687, gateway filtered the enveloping luminosity. On each side of us uprose gradually con- verging and perpendicular scarps along whose base huddled a sparse foliage. _ There came a low whistle of astonish- ment from Drake; I turned. We were slowly gliding toward something that looked like nothing so much as a huge and shimmering bubble of mingled sapphire and turquoise, swimming up from and two- thirds above and the balance still hidden within earth. It seemed to draw to itself the light, sending it back with gleamings of the gray-blue of the star sapphire, with pellucid azures and lazulis like clouded jades, with glistening peacock iridescences and tender, milky: blues of tropic shallows. Little turrets globular and topaz, yellow and pierced with tiny hexagonal openings clustered about it like baby bubbles just nestling down to rest. Great trees shad- owed it, unfamiliar trees among whose glossy leaves blossomed in wreaths flowers pink and white as apple-blooms. From their graceful branches strange fruits, gold- en and scarlet and pear-shaped, hung pen- dulous. It was an elfin palace; a goblin dwelling: such a bower as some mirthful, beauty- loving Jinn King of Jewels might have raised from his enchanted hoards for some well-beloved daughter of earth. All of fifty feet in height was the blue globe. Up to a wide and ovaled entrance ran a broad and shining roadway. Along this the cubes swept and stopped. ‘“My house!” murmured Norhala. The attraction that had held us to the surface of the blocks relaxed, angled through the changed and assisting lines of force; the hosts of minute eyes sparkling quizzically, interestedly, at us, we gently slid Ventnor’s body; lifted down the pony. “Enter!” sighed Norhala, and waved a welcoming hand. “Tell her to wait a minute,” ordered Drake. He slipped the bandage from the pony’s head, threw off the saddle-bags, and led it to the side of the glistening roadway where thick, lush grass was growing, span- _ gled with flowerets. There he hobbled it; rejoined us. Together we picked up Vent- nor and passed slowly through the portal. mG (C(O) 6)(0)©) S (C(O) nn