Adventure, July 1, 1928 — page 147: what you’re looking at

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

THE THRALDOM OF SINGAN met Quental before, for she took the Portuguese by an arm and marched him straight off to the poop, apparently to-be out of earshot of both Eade and the German. There the two talked for some time, Quental gesticulating excitedly. Then he suddenly ordered his lascar serang to pipe his odds and ends of a crew on deck, scrambled up to the bridge and got the packet under way. That was something of a surprise to both Eade and the worthy Gottheimer; for Quental had just sworn, by all the saints he didn’t believe in, that he couldn’t weigh anchor until nearly sun- down, to clear the roads before dark. Eade didn’t much mind. So far as he could see, they could do no worse than run aground. He supposed he would get to Nolak somehow, and that there he would find his cousin, Charles. What more immediately interested him was the lady passenger, who hadn’t come out of her cabin all day long. From the glimpse he had~got of her when she had come tripping up the gangway, John L. Eade had more than liked the looks of her. .Fascinating little bit of goods, and none the less so because he had never expected to come across anything at all like her in the heart of a tropic forest. From the captain he had found out her name, and that she was either married or a widow— found out just enough to make him in- quisitive. But apart from her prettiness, there was the attraction of a mystery about her, since for some reason or other the little Portuguese was risking the safety of his ship on her account. Eade sounded Gottheimer who had been up the river before and who had spent the entire day in a deck chair smoking cheroots, cursing the climate and drinking beer. There would be dinner at six-thirty, he declared, at which Quental would act as host. The Chauve-Souris was a hell-boat, because there was no ice on_ board. Nolak was a fever trap at the Back of Beyond and, were it not for rubber, would have been forgotten long since by Gott 141 and never by man discovered. The lady passenger at dinner might appear—he could not say. In the East he didn’t take any particular interest in white girls; he preferred Japanese, Javanese or Burmese. Herr Gottheimer, enlivened by pale India ale, expressed his views with more conviction than delicacy. As he had never heard of any one attempting to go up the Yalai by night, he would be sur- prised if before morning they were not shipwrecked and eaten by crocodiles. And in any case, he repeated, the Chauve- Souris was a hell-boat, and the Yalai an earthly Styx. Eade, who had no use for this sort of thing, strolled toward the little saloon which lay aft, across a shallow well-deck between the engine room and the poop. T WAS rapidly growing dark—the swift sunset of the tropics. What could be seen of the sky above the treetops was a blurred streak of reddish brown; and the air, alive with insects, was like a wet blanket, heavy and suffocating. Eade entered the saloon, where a lamp was burning and a Chinese boy was lay- ing the table for dinner, in which task he was being helped by the lady passenger herself. She was dressed in a Japanese kimono; ‘and in that light Eade thought she looked even prettier than before. She was talking to.the boy in Chinese; and as the tablecloth was not as clean as it might have been, she was insisting upon having another one. When Eade walked into the saloon, she looked up and smiled. ““This is how men keep house!” she ob- served, with her fascinating French accent, and just the suspicion of a lisp. “Were it not for women, I think you would all become savages again.” Fade liked the way she said that, quite apart from the fact that he thought there might be some truth in it. “At any rate,” he answered, “we can appreciate the niceties of life, if some- times we don’t bother about them. Can I be of any assistance?”’ comiicloooks.com