Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 103: what you’re looking at

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

THE TEMPLE : 3 en )°) of something, and I had not heeded—but he was a soft-headed Rhinelander who went mad at troubles which a Prussian could bear with ease. The rest is very simple. My impulse to visit and enter the temple has now become an inexplicable and imperious command which ultimately can not be denied. My own German will no longer controls my acts, and volition is henceforward possible only in minor matters. Such madness it was which drove Klenze to his death, bareheaded and unprotected in the ocean; but I am a Prussian and a man of sense,.and will use to the last what little will I have. When first I saw that I must go, I prepared my diving-suit, helmet, and air regenerator for instant donning, and immediately commenced to write this hurried chronicle in the hope that it may some day reach the world. I shall seal the manuscript in a bottle and entrust it to the sea as I leave the U-29 forever. = _ [have no fear, not even from the prophecies of the madman Klenze. What I have seen I can not be sure, and I know that this madness of my own will at most lead only to suffocation when my air is gone. The light in the temple is a sheer delusion, and I shall die calmly, like a German, in the black and forgotten depths. This demoniac laughter which J hear as I write comes only from my own weakening brain. So I will carefully don my diving-suit and walk boldly up the steps into that primal shrine, that silent secret of un- fathomed waters and uncounted years. sg comi (9) bookscom —