Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

Ships wouldn’t, for their lives, come up to windward; I was therefore almost sure that nobody, save myself, had seen or visited the cave, : That pleased me—you know how it is. I was glad that I had brought my - torch with me—a costly big five-cell, like a searchlight, that She had sent me when I sailed; she hadn’t sixpence to rub against sixpence, but she would have given her head away—and so would I; that was why we both were poor, and likely to remain so... . . I had a good look at the cave. It was very high; seventy or eighty feet at least. It was not quite so wide, but it seemed to run a good way back. The cold stream of wind that came out of it-had a curious smell; I could not describe it to myself, otherwise than by saying that the smell seemed very _ old. I stood in the archway, in that stream of slightly tainted wind, examin- ing the rocks about the mouth of the cave. There was not much daylight left now, but I could see, plainly enough, that here was small hope of a better find. I kept the torch in my hand as I went on into the interior of the cave; time enough, I thought, to turn it on when I had to; there were no spare batteries on the island. _ By and by I began to go backwards; that is, I went on a little way, and then turned to look at the ground I had passed, lit up by the stream of light from the entrance. Coral, old and crumbling underfoot; limestone: a vein of conglomerate. Nowhere any sign of what I sought. It was getting darker; the cave, arching high above me, seemed to veer a little to one side, and the long slip of blue daylight was almost gone. Now, with half-a-dozen steps, I lost it altogether; I stood in complete darkness, with the cool wind stream. ing about me, and that strange, aged ‘smell, now decidedly stronger. “Time for the light,” I thought. Something made me swallow in my throat, made me press my foremost foot tight to the ground, because it seemed, oddly enough, to have developed a will of its Own; it wanted to move back, and the backward foot wanted to swing on its toe and turn round. . . . I will swear I was not afraid—but somehow my feet were. I snapped on the light, and swung it ahead. It showed a narrow range of rock wall on each side;-a block of velvet darkness ahead, and in the midst of the darkness, low down, two circles of shining bluish green. Eyes—but what eyes! They were the size of dinner-plates! ‘They did: not move, they only looked; and I was entirely sure that they saw me. If they had been high up, _ I do not think I should have minded them—much. But they were, as I have said, low down, and that was somehow horrible. Lurking. Treacherous. , . ,_ [ had shot crocodiles by night, discovering them exactly as I had discov- ered this unnamed monster, by the shine of their eyes in torchlight. But I — had had a sporting-rifle to do it with, and knew what I was shooting at. Now I was totally unarmed; the futile shotgun I had brought with me for: stray pot-hunting, was up at the bungalow. I had not the vaguest idea what this creature might be, but I knew what was the only thing to do under the circumstances, and J did it: I ran away. Nothing ‘stirred. Nothing followed me. When I reached the outer arch _ of the cave, all glorious with sea and sunset, there was not a sound any- where but the lifting crash and send of the waves upon the broken beach, — (a) Com LOOKS