Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 57: what you’re looking at

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

bling on one puny Jeg, neither able to stand erect among established scientific truths nor to fall to dissolution among the mistaken ideas of the past.” _ “What single, if weak, leg supports your theory that the craters of the moon were caused by meteorites?” I asked. | “You are standing on it,” replied the professor. Then, seeing me look around in perplexity, he added: “Crater Mound is the only known Ter- restrial formation that exactly resembles in shape the great ring mountains of the moon. If Crater Mound was caused by the impact of a gigantic meteorite with the earth, there is a strong probability that the numerous ringed craters of the moon were created in a like manner.” ; “But was it?” I asked. “That is something I can neither prove nor disprove,” he replied. “The evidence I have thus far discovered leads me to believe that many relatively — small meteoric fragments have fallen here. But they could not have fallen singly, or by twos and threes to make this dent three-quarters of a mile in diameter and more than four hundred feet below the surrounding earth level, to say nothing of throwing up the ring on which we now stand to a mean height of a hundred and fifty feet above the plain.” “Then how could they have fallen?” “If this great earthen bowl was caused by them, they must have struck this plain in an immense cluster at least a third of a mile in diameter, probably more.” : : “In that case, what has become of the cluster?” “Part of it is probably buried beneath the soil. Part of it, exposed to the air, would have been burned to a fine ash, having generated a ter- rific heat in its passage through the atmosphere and still having, before it cooled, an opportunity to unite with oxygen. There should, however, be an intermediary residue which I have been unable to find.” “Maybe it was carted off by prehistoric Americans for the metals it con- tained,” I feebly ventured to suggest. } “Improbable as that statement may seem,” said the professor, “there is a small amount of evidence in favor of it, for I have found a number of meteoric fragments miles from’ the rim of the crater. By Jove! We appear to have a visitor!” i He clapped his powerful binoculars to his eyes, and looking in the direction in which they pointed, I saw a tall, bent figure, apparently at- tired in a robe or gown, leaning on a long staff and carrying a bundle of poles under one arm, slowly descending the slope opposite us. “Séems to be a Chinaman,” he said, passing the glasses to me. “What is your opinion?” I looked and saw an undeniably Mengolian face, with slanting eyes, prominent cheek bones, and a long, thin moustache, the ends of which drooped at least four inches below the chin. The voluminous garments, a: EComichooks:com