A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, October 1950 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

96 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY sor.c subtle inner warning that he did not at the time coin into words, hastened on his way without a second glance. Yet he could not forget for hours the inky silhouette of the over-arching palms that the moonlight cast on the white sands at her feet, nor the startled eagerness of her dark eyes, nor the scarlet hibiscus blossoms she had set in her long braids. Heretofore—for was there not the girl at home—the women of the tribe had meant nothing to him. What might have happened had not Lamatia immediately marked him for her man it is hard to say. Her method of attack was the only one which her little world understood, an in- sistent, bewilderingly frank appeal to sex, by all the arts in which the maidens of her race are carefully instructed from early girlhood. The girl’s beauty was of a kind that did no outrage to his most delicate sensibil- ities; her features were of the unblended Caucasian type occasionally found among the Polynesians; her eyes, shadowy but lustrous, were full of strange, alluring fires; her lips, sweetly sensitive, though full; her supple young hody—the color of pale ivory, firm and satin smooth with much lomi-lomi—was fragrantly clean as a dewey flower, as soft as a cloud, and charged with a sweet madness. A strangely troubling creature was Lamaiia, who knew passionately what she wanted and cunningly how to get it. AFT ER that evening it was inevitable and very sweet. As evidence of good faith the American permitted her kinsmen to prick upon his brow the emblem of their secret lodge, and submitted to the blood transfusion which cemented the brotherhood. He regarded the tattooing as a final surrender to his fate. There could be no return now. From some strange inhibti- tion which he did not attempt to analyze, however, he never afterward looked at his own reflection im the water. There tollowed months in which he forgot everything but the sunshine and shadow oi the tropical days and nights, the glancing of the surf, and Lamaiia. To the girl their relation was the natural cul- mination of liie—the enslaving of the chosen mule. She wove her witchery as one accom- plishing her destiny. To the man she was alternately a kindling flame and a narcotic. He yielded—for a time—utterly to the madness that was in her spell. Yet later, when the first intoxication of the new sweet relationship had worn off and he woke daily to the realization that to break the monotony of the eternal sunshine there could come only the shad- ow; that day after day must be alike— just the hissing of the breakers and La- maiia—then he found rising within him the old familiar restlessness. He was like a man awakening from a long dream to the recognition of hunger and needs to which he had for a time been oblivious. As the long drowsy days merged one after another into long, sleep- less nights, his active mind began to crave again the stimulus of the problems, the busy, exacting existence to which it had been accustomed. He faced a growing uneasiness that would not be lulled to sleep. Thwarted, it turned on him and became a gnawing fury. One day a silver sail flitted for hours along the horizon like a tantalizing fairy thing. As long as it was in sight the American lay upon the sand, his chin upon his arms, his eyes never leaving it. Lamaiia crouched beside him, some- times putting out a fearful hand to touch his unresponsive arm. That night he did not sleep. Then one day there washed ashore among other wreckage—perhaps from the very ship he had sighted—some papers and magazines, probably from the locker of one of the ship’s officers. As he read he felt rising within him an agony of home- sickness. There was a photograph of his own college campus. The picture of an Eng- lish nurse, bravely sweet and fine, had the gallant eyes of the girl at home. But the acid touch was applied to his quivering nerves by a brief article which dealt with achievements and successes in his own particular field. Other men doing the work he had been born to do, achieving triumphs which should have been his, for which he had paved the way. Each new page helped to swell to full tide that cruel restlessness which reminded him that he was Anglo- ian) (C 6)(0)©) Ss (C(O)