Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

“You would,” he said. “Have a hair of the dog as bit you, and take some bromide when you re going to bed.” | “Look here—will you come down to the cave yourself?” I pleaded. | _ _ “With all that machinery to land, and the ship bound to clear before sun- down? Not much.” “Very well. Will you come for a walk on the top of the island after dark?” “Oh, yes,” he said, casually. “Never saw anything when I was here for a fortnight, and don’t expect to now. But I'll come.” “Was it moonlight when you were here?” I shouted after him as he started for the beach. = “What's that to— Yes, I reckon it was.’ ae Rattray Smith began deliberately: The influence of light on all these E phenomena—” 3 “What d’ye mean?” I asked. “Are you a spiritualist? Surely you couldn’t = be.” — “In the excellent company of Sir William Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge, . certainly could,” he answered. “I suppose you think that the modern man of science 1s necessarily skeptic, like his—his—” “I think he believes either a darn’ sight too little, or a devilish sight too much, if you ask me,” I said. “But wait till tonight.” We waited. And after dark, we all went up to the top of the island and 3 posted ourselves in the “pill- box.” There was-an enormous sky of stars above us; all round us the faintly smelling, feebly rustling grasses, and standing up among them, big as cottages and anwar cars, were e the silhouetted shapes of gigantic rocks. te® I had thought we might have bees to wait, and after all might see noth- : = ; i ing; but I was wrong. We had not been in the pill-box ten minutes, before ae a whole mass of stars before us went suddenly black. It was just over the — , biggest of the cottage-sized rocks, and I had a nasty idea that the rock itself —or what we had thought to be ‘rock—was part of the rising mass. 7 eee Have you ever seen an innocent stick turn into a serpent, a log in.a river Bat show sudden crocodile-eyes and swim away? os If you have, then you will know how I felc. Up went the monster, half across the sky; and now it began to lurch and hirple with that strange movement I had noted before, covering immense areas of ground with every lurch. I heard Rattray Smith draw in his breath with a sort of whistling noise. : “I don’t think it'll touch us,” I whispered, with my lips on his ear. “Keep quiet.” 7 3 “Man,” he said. “Oh, man!’ and seemed to choke. France kept quite still, I smelled the queer smell of it, not the sort of smell it should have been; strangely old and non-pungent. I saw a small shadow, round-headed, come out of nowhere and scuttle away. I saw the great shadow hunting it. Smith saw too; for some extraordinary reason, he was crying, in broken, half-sup- c---. pressed sobs. | : “I don't reckon it can—” I began, in a cautious whisper. He interrupted, ComicDoookss