Adventure, August 3, 1919 — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

eat 3 saw and heard nothing of that. All that he saw at the last was Sir Percy’s slender hafd waving him a last adieu. © After which he was left alone with his thoughts. The packet of papers was : in his hand. He fingered it, felt its crisp- ness, clutched it with a fierce gesture, which by THOMAS S. MILLER Y call it the White Man’s Grave, that western bulge in the pear-shape of Africa that comprises the Gold Coast, Ivory Coast and, ominous term, the Fever Coast. Fever Coast! And, as if that name were not sufficiently frightening, the young official or the young man going to a trading- station on the Niger has to run the gantlet of | horrible tales of native deviltry and the insidious ways of fever. It is a popular “sport’’-on the out voyage for the ship’s officers and “‘old coasters” to pump these tales into the newcomer, and by ‘dint of insistence and gravity of expression to break through his morale, so that by the time the ship noses into the exotic, fetid Niger delta ; and dumps him into the silent, brooding, reeking, ; stagnant mangrove swamps, his nerves are tensioned to the worst. 8 Perhaps his» first sight is an emaciated. white being carried aboard ship, to die at sea and spare the colony’s- mortality statistics. Then there is bound to be an idle white around to show him the | sights. He will be taken to a large shed where kit- bags and steamer-trunks are piled high and bear the appalling epitaph, ‘Effects of J—, and R— and M—, deceased.’ He may be a bidder at one of : the pathetic little auctions of these effects and do his share in boosting the prices, for the benefit ; of a mother or widow and orphans over the sea, He lies around that reeking swamp waiting orders, nervously expectant of his “first dose,” ly his baptismal fever which the few whites in envy unholy delight in predicting. If he manages to % escape for a couple of weeks he becomes the target of serious mock-sympathy and doleful prophecy. ’ “Tf you’re not inoculated before the heat and canned chop and the mosquitoes have enervated you it’s a ten-to-one shot you croak. That's the way it was with S—. He——’” _ Here follows a distressing tale. He will take to surreptitiously popping a clinical thermometer “Man,” he is told, “‘you’ye got fever, only you _ don’t know it.” — _ His life ‘seems to hang on the verdict of the ) ‘mercury. He is Psi dateaes by a popular “joke”; ae el aS rete r * Vays é * “~ West Africa and Funkitis WEST AFRICA AND “‘FUNRAITIS” ~ the deadliness of the rainy season, the awfulness of his beefy cheeks and obtrusive health take an- cliable thermometer that adds Ome 55 was followed by a long-drawn-out sigh of in- tense bitterness. _ No one would ever know what it had cost him to obtain these papers. No one would ever know how much he had sacrificed of pride, revenge and hate in order to save a few shreds of his own party’s honor. . a few degrees to the actual condition, or the mercury has been surreptitiously boosted, Come orders for him to proceed to a certain station. Instantly he is the focus of long, commiserating faces and cruel sympathy. “That's the rottenest hole in Nigeria, J— died up there, and when R— went up to relieve B— all he found of B— was a mound in the swamp. The niggers said he died of fever, but—it’s the + Jekri tribe up there. They're an ugly bunch to deal with.” ee, He gets into a small launch or canoe and goes off with blacks whom he can not talk to, into a strange world of dense forests and glassy waters—strange vegetation, strange animals, strange skies. He has long, unfilled hours in which to brood himself into “funkitis.” Eventually he arrives at the trading- station, which is probably a rat-infested. blackened and ancient hulk moored to the jungle. The exile there is pitifully relieved to see him, does not try to disguise the fact that to go home is to go from hell to heaven, and with a view of “putting him next’’ morbidly paints the treachery of the natives, of the loneliness, the insidious peculiarities and — varieties of fever. “Are you well-stocked in quinine? You'd better see that your nigger tastes your chow btfore you eat; hot that that is much of a safeguard, for he'll poison you himself if he takes a fancy to the pants you're wearing. There’s an interpreter here you'll have to watch pretty close. Don’t present your back to him. He carries a knife in his loin-cloth and is a member of a secret society among the blacks that is set on ridding the country of us whites. You've got to be mighty careful, too, _ not to offend their ju-jw superstitions, Did yor bring a deck of cards? If it hadn’t been for solitaire I'd have gone crazy to know how to kill time. ES =: white ants ate up my grips. D’ye want to = eee kit-bag? Ten-to-one you won't have any or it; Niger.” : Next day the young man finds himself a lone white in a hostile world. Right there he starts marking off the calendar and counting the days to his relief and estimating his chances of ving Sis seeit. Inawordhehas“funkitis” 44 a, ty d : ‘ ta <3 “ e 4 oe ye 5 : ‘. _" ha . > * Comicbooks.com 2 this station is the rottenest on the i ll 3