Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 192: what you’re looking at

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

190 crater by now, and our cave was darkening rapidly. Now long before this I had thought of ex- plaining the case in its entirety to old Mo- hong. I had thought to tell him how Lip- Plak-Tengga had duped me into receiving the god from her hands in order that the Poonan, once they learned it was in my possession, should rise up and whelm me over, and thereby work out for her both a revenge and a balm for my having refused her love; I had thought to tell him that Golden Feather of Flame and I honestly meant to return the god to the Dobo and, to that end, sincerely were striving; and I had thought to tell him that, most of all, we did not want the Poonan to know the true posture of affairs until that posture of affairs was thoroughly righted—the god re- turned to the Dobo and everything, once more, as it had been. . But one look now at his slits of eyes glow- ing in the torch-light, black and old and ma- - licious as a snake’s, and I paused to recon- sider my thought. The man hated me. He hated me as poisonously and consumingly as nitric acid hates an engraver’s copper. He thought I had stolen the Green, Green God from the Dobo. He believed that slowly but inevitably the Green, Green God was coming to life; and with a terrific ap- prehension born of that horrible legend, he feared the misfortunes that unalterably must follow. All this, it was his merciless religion to believe and dread. And with an awful dread he believed that in another day, perhaps—surely not more than a moon— the god would fly screaming at him, peck at his back, rob him of his heart, rob him of all life. And he wanted to live. He was an old man, true; but in no one is the desire to live so strong as in the old. He wanted to live. I was the cause therefore, the indirect cause, but still the cause, of all his religious dreads and awful terrors. He would not listen to my explanations. It mattered not to him how I had come into possession of the god. To him it only mattered, solely mattered, that I had in my unrightful keep- ing a dread god, and that that dread god was arousing momentarily to life. To him my possession of that dread god was tan- _ tamount to meaning the end of his life, the end of all life in the Jallan Batoe—the end of the whole world! Adventure Fle would not listen to me. He was an old man with an old man’s fixedness of idea. And he had but one idea now. He hated me with a rancor that was whole-souled, deep- seated, intolerable and malignant. Wherefore, I did not tell old Mohong. And yet I knew that just as soon as we re- moved the gag from his withered mouth in order to allow him to eat, just so soon would ‘he scream out. We left the removal of that gag till the last. We eased the rattan bind- ings from about his wrists and arms. Then, finally, we took out the gag. I had expected him to scream, I repeat; and yet when he did scream now, I jumped in every nerve of me. For he was screaming shrilly: “The Man-Child has stolen the god! The Man-Child has stolen the Green, Green God! It will come to life, it will come——” With both hands I grasped his reedy windpipe. I held him tight by that wind- pipe, tighter, tighter And then, wholly suddenly, upon my ears burst the sunset singing of the stones. I released my hands from about his stringy neck. *“Now yell!” I shouted grimly. I shouted to make myself heard in all that thrum and hum of the stone about our ears. But he only wheezed and choked, and looked at me with slits of eyes that were black and old and venomous as a snake’s. He knew it would be worse than useless to scream now amid all that shaking sound in the air; he knew he never would be heard. So sullenly, therefore, he fell to eating. Ere that wail of the Men-Who-Would- Have-Been had ceased as abruptly as it had commenced, we gagged old Mohong once more and trussed him up as tightly as he had been. Then we left him in the corridor —a black bundle with flashing eyes—and went back with our shaky light into the great cave-chamber. I placed three of the prepared torches in sockets in the walls, and lighted them from the flame of the torch in my hand. And then, as I was placing that torch in my hand into a wall-socket, my bride came to my side and leaned softly against me and reached up her little hand to my beard; and thus, gently pulling my head down by that beard, she kissed me upon the mouth. Softly thereupon she whispered: “Let us make the venture early this night, my Raj. Let us take that which is in the Gomichbooks (E(0)