The thunder roared; the lightning flashed; the wind howled; the tempest beat through the night, bearing on its fleet winds of darkness a torrent of driving, splattering rain. Splintering darts of lightning crackled through the raging storm, their crystalline reflection caught in the driving sheets of watery spray; their swift illumination lighting but dimly a rocky shore beaten and tossed by black lashing waves of the angry ocean. And, upon that ragged, element-swept shore, cowered the Searcher. He crouched there in the darkness, his muffled figure swaying to the fierce tug of the wind and the impact of the driving rain. Water ran in streams from his drenched clothing. The icy breath of the wind pierced through to his soul like so many needles of death. Placing a gaunt, weary hand above his brow he strained his vision to pierce out into the darkness. And suddenly the storm ceased. The rain disappeared with a last futile spray, and the dark clouds overhead parted sullenly to reveal a cold frozen moon of silver. The thousands of tiny aberrations in the tossing wavelets on the ocean's bottom sent steely reflection of the moon's luminescence in sparkling sheens to the Searcher's eyes. For long he hung there motionless, a gaunt shadow peering into the distant darkness of the horizon. But abruptly-- He started. He has sighted an object floating inward upon the tide. Running swiftly along the shore, he seized it eagerly as it fell to the shore at his feet. With a wild cry of exuberant delight he threw himself down upon the sands to scan its pages. It was a copy of Astounding Stories! Yes! Out of the great ocean of magazine fiction it had come to the Searcher's eyes, the magazine supreme--Astounding Stories! A magazine which was new, a magazine which expressed something new in an entirely different way! A thing super-ordinary, it was--a boon to the tired fiction reader. Yessirree! Something new and in a different way! You bet that's what I like, and that's why I halted, hearkened, and hastened to the newsstands to buy that new magazine, Astounding Stories. New authors!--a breath of delicious novelty!--the magazine of to-morrow's romance and the super-science thereof! Why, it's almost too good to be true, and here am I, ready to take that new mag to hand and make it our own. Yes, I think we can call it "our" own, for with the installation of Astounding Stories comes the new epic of the magazine, a magazine which is made by the reader. Sure nuff--our wants and whims rule the magazine; so it's surely "ours," and I mean possessively! So, Readers all, I'm going to take my part of the magazine this day and operate on it, no matter what Mr. Bates thinks or cares about it. Yes, sir.