Air Wonder Stories, July 1929 — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

MEN WITH WINGS 69 “There was a soft down on the strange append- ages and it looked as if the little fellow would one day be able to fy! Fly he might, but his arms had been sacrificed. The little mother must have wept over her maimed darling and Mentor surely wasn’t happy over it, but at the same time he knew that the first rung of the ladder had been climbed. They could only hope that this was an accident. The scientist again went into his laboratories and brought forth another mess that was added to the diet of his family. “The new baby became the pet of the family and they all tried to keep him from knowing of his loss. At four years old they tried to teach him to fly, but the wings had not matured and were weak sticks. They did act as a sort of support when the little fellow took jumps from the top of a flight of steps and landed at the foot nicely balanced with his feathered arms otttspread. The down of the wings had grown into small feathers, unevenly distributed the length of the wing, but they had none of the beauty of the present-day wings of the people of Mentor.” Off To Mentor * 4 ND so,” went on Wormley after sipping some more water, “All went well until the third generations began to arrive. For his grandchildren Mentor had taken the easiest course and married cousin to cousin, hoping in this way to hasten his evolutionary trick. “His cry of joy was heard throughout the castle and into the valley below when the first great-grand child came into the world with odd protuberances on his little shoulders. They were no more than little lumps with the least suggestion of down upon them, but they were the first link of the long chain. It mattered not to the grandfather that the mother of the babe died in giving it birth, for that night was one of celebration. There were no invited guests to the feast; Mentor had no desire to make the world aware of the nature of his experiments. “More children were born, some had the humps on their shoulders, some did not; but two were born with more definite suggestions of the sought-for wings. Then the son of the arm-less grandchild was born, and lo, he had wings, true wings almost as long as his body and arms as well! “Mentor might have been able to rear his family in Scotland and there the race might haye grown as well as in the jungles of South America had not word slipped out to the authorities in Edin- burgh. Had a servant told or had one of Mentor’s offspring slipped away and tattled? The truth can’t be learned, but it was enough that a small army of soldiers of the king came to the stronghold and demanded in the name of God, the Pope and the King as to what sacrilege had been perpetrated here in this fastness. ; “Mentor had in some way been forewarned and the monstrosities had been secreted away so that the officers retreated somewhat disgruntled and empty-handed. Still Mentor wisely foresaw that this was the beginning of the end. Word of the discovery of new land to the westward had reached Scotland and the stalwart old gentleman who was not to be thwarted decided to leave the narrow con- fines of his native country, “So it happened that the Mentor clan embarked for the new world, and the old world was left in ignorance. Mentor first went to the nearest seaport and there with his money bought men and women who were willing to go to the new country across the sea. He chartered a ship, provisioned it and with some plausible excuse to the authorities, no doubt, started out for a nice quiet place where he could carry on his good work for the betterment of humanity! “The ship was headed for North America, but a storm arose out of the night when the ship lay presumably not far from the Virginian coasts. The storm drove them south and then out to sea again and raged for three days and three nights driving the ship ahead in its fury. Somewhat crippled, they limped on taking bearings by sun and stars and hoping that land was near, The captain was new to this part of the world and only the offer of more money than he had ever heard of before had brought him this far. He had no idea where the storm had carried them and hopefully had headed west and a little south. One when they saw land they made for it, but a great number of Indians put out in their canoes and in fright the captain Tan away. “Then, when they were possibly off the coast of Florida, a second time a storm caught them, a storm of hurricane dimensions and again bore them out to sea, During the storm’s wildness the crew in fright and frenzy murdered not only the captain but the two mates, so that when the storm abated at last, the ship’s company found them- selves without a single navigator aboard. The crew would have murdered Mentor, too, but he de- fended himself well. “A month passed and now the almost wholly crippled vessel wallowed through the seas and drifted without guidance. Food and water was low and disease was stalking the deck, Mentor, old and broken, now died and was buried at sea, Horace Mentor, the eldest son, took charge, “Realizing that all would be lost unless some- thing drastic was done, he ordered the planks torn from the deck’s floor and the women give up their petticoats to make a sail for the single slender mast that stood. Every able-bodied man was forced to take his turn-at rowing so that after the sixth day the lookout atop the mast cried ‘Land!’ “Thus the Mentors came to the coast of Brazil. They found food in plenty, made friends with the Indians and built palm thatched houses for them- selves. .Spaniards came, but they looked with friendly eyes upon the growing settlement knowing that the Scotch were as deadly enemies of the English as they themselves.” The Founding of A Nation sy eee broke in Wormley, “this is a story and a half. Doctor Morris told it to me, but I’m sort of condensing it,” “Go on, you're doing fine.” “Well, to make the best of the long tale... the Spaniards continued as friends. They were for the most part pushing into the interior of the coun- try searching for gold and they did not see much of the Mentorites, but by that time children were being born with appendages that were true wings. comnicloooks.com