Most of the chapters of this serial by Charles H. Hunt exist, however the OCR of those newspaper pages are not the best. Here is an excerpt from chapter IV, where the protagonist encounters the feathered humanoid aliens for the first time:
c• HAPu i IV. It was not :long before I discovered .bcoos the -oelees cnmei .or on odd-loohlng -ehlcl.i turned hth scn rtoail and cne toanrdo ehere I was standing. Alter my resent tpoe rienece I non folly persuaded that nothing could cnuse me more than n mild surprise, but when this-thing drew noer I onuld only stire In astonishmeni. What in the distance np penoed to be n oeggon. non turned out to be a hind of bange. It wns tooting in the at some three etot-omn the Gronno. nod being propelleSd and guided like a punt hey’menen of ?olie-norked he the queerent mortals mingl-e able. ktidently they had not yet seen me, mor they continued their chant until the oessel wOn brought to a reet on the ground opposite to anopeneing-intho stoneatlL Apparently they hod cote to gather a load of the plants I have already. mentioned. for three Of then icme diate-y Jumped out and commenced cotting of the e ousters of seeds with smali choppers, and – tosning themoto the one in the bnrge I nntehed them with interest eor some minnte., when a shorp exlamotion from one of then told me that my presencoe was dis covered. Alonened by the ery-.they all lebnt Into the boege with wondereul agliliy. and nero aboht to maoe o n, when I called out. and held up msie handn to show that I carried no weopon. This seemed to reonoure them. for they naited. keeping their honds ready on the poles whlle io edroneed slowly tonands them. A fee yardO away I holted, and an involuntary geop of astoniehment snciped mo no my eyes took in ths peeollor- characteristics of these eurlous beings. None of them nere over lt, In height, but they poswesed strong and nell-knlt igures, aond:l-belr movemeete. onhaopered by eny nlothin. with the oeepiOtn ni a garment ollke a kilt. nere quith and decisive. They were all bearded. and not ll-looklng. with a certain stolid Intelligence, but thereo o n sadness in their loage eyes ihlch -suggeted the hopeleno neso of a csoquered 0r down-trodden rate. That they were unclothed is not strictly accu rate. foe nature had supplied n garb in her owns oay. With the exception o. their faces, fore-arms and bands, and legs. from the knes donwnwards. they oere covered with short fee thems; l! of sober, coloring. varying in shades frnsi ge-e to hrono. and at a casual gianco one would have concluded that they were wenr Ing geather-bathing costhmes.
While some words can be made out, for the average reader it is too much of a challenge to persevere with. Unfortunately most of the story looks like this, with several sections decidedly worse.
Here’s a screen shot of the scan:
I have three options in mind. Firstly, to see if I can find a better OCR scan and work from that. (Stories are sometimes syndicated which means there should be multiple versions out there. At the time of writing I am only aware of it having been printed in the Mirror, and the Sunday Times. ) Secondly, I could attempt to rescan the current version with new OCR software. I can read the original so it might just be a matter of getting better tools.
The third option is to painstakingly and manually fix every bad OCR letter individually, or simply just type the whole thing out again (the latter approach which, while time consuming, would be a lot easier.)
Still, it’s great to discover this kind of story from 1913.
