Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

_ stood for a moment looking at the magnificent sky that paled and darkened while one could quickly have counted a hundred. “I shall have to come back,” was my thought, “with a charge of dynamite, and a bit of fuse. Shotgun just as much use as a pea-shooter.” I told myself these things, but now that I was out of the cave, I could not for the life of me believe in what I had seen. “It wasn’t the sort of smell it ought to have been,” I said aloud weakly, and kicked the stones about aimlessly with my foot. Somethiag rolled. I looked at it, and it was.a skull. “Peter Riordan,” I said, “this is not your lucky day.” And I picked up the skull. There were bones with it, all loose and lying about. “I can make a - guess what happened to Mr. Bones!” I said, peering through swiftly falling twilight at the skull. It was like a’shock of cold water to see that it was old - beyond computing—almost fossilized, dark and mossy with the passage of incalculable time. As for the bones, they crackled like pie-crust when I put my foot on them. I could see where they had fallen out of the rock; they must have lain there buried, for a long time. “I don’t understand,” I thought. “Things don’t fit together. This is a hell of an island.” It seemed good to me to climb the cliff as fast as I could, mak- ing for the solid walls of the bungalow, and leaving behind me in the in- hospitable twilight those queer bones now unburied, and the cave, and the immense green eyes that did not move. : | The bungalow was a good way off; in order to reach it, I had to cross the empty rolling downs on the top of the island, with their long grass that never was still, and their heaps of hummocks of black stone. By this time it was so late that I could only see the stones as lumps of indefinite darkness. Some of them were big even by daylight; by night they looked immense. They were queerly shaped, too; once, when I paused to get breath (for I can assure you I was going hard) I noticed that the biggest one in sight looked exactly like the rounded hind-quarters of an elephant, only no elephant ever was so big. I leaned against a boulder, and mopped my face. There was a rather warm wind blowing; it brought with it the sort of scents that one expects by night —the dark-green smell of grass wet with dew, the curious singeing odor of baked stones gradually giving out their heat, little sharp smells of rat and iguana, out hunting. And something else. . . . : __ “Peter Riordan,” I said, “you quit imagining things that aren’t there. Rafferty did, and Wilder did.” And I propped myself against the stone, and took out a cigarette. | | It- was never lighted. Just as I was feeling in my matchbox, I looked at the giant boulder again, and as I hope for heaven, I saw it walk away. That | is, it did not walk—it hobbled, lurching against the sky. For obvious reasons I-didn’t light the cigarette, but I put it into my mouth, and chewed it; that was better than pothing. “We aren’t going to be stam- peded,” I said (but noiselessly, you may believe). “We are going to see this through.” And, being as wise as I was brave—perhaps a little wiser—I got inside a sort of pill-box of loose stones, and peered out through the openings. By this time it was as dark as the inside of a cow; you could only see stars ong (18 ; GConilicboo Kks:com