Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 197: what you’re looking at

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

The Story of William Hyde But outside the moon-bathed night was without stir, silent as the dead. No bare feet trod through the muffling grass of the avenue, no bare feet flopped upon the moon- washed stairs. It was a soundless night— like a night before Adam when only gigantic, fat worms lifted their dumb, blind heads in a great gray world of slime and ooze. The Poonan did not come. I leaped up and paced the floor. I paced back and forth, back and forth, but always I paced close to that low doorway, the re- volver ready in my right hand. The mo- ments snailed slowly by—black within the cave, ghostly with moonlight and quietude outside in the night. And all the while, asI paced now, an idea, born of desperation, ob- sessed me. If only I could return the Green, Green God that night, all might be well. I might forestall the Poonan—it might not yet be too late—and then we could live on, my wife and I, as King and Queen of the Poo- nan; as King and Queen of our paradise on earth. I halted beside the couch. Impulsively I grabbed up Golden Feather of Flame, caught her in my arms, and kissed her pas- sionately, again and again, upon the mouth. “Wait for me here—I am going, my bride,” I said. “Alone and single-handed, I am going to return the Green, Green God this night. MNda, nda!” as bravely she made to rise. “You must not accompany me. You are too weak with fright and fear to accompany me, so weak that your presence would prove a hindrance tome. And I can not chance being hindered now, my bride. I must return the God this night. Perhaps it is not too late. Lip-Plak-Tengga never will think I will try again tonight. But I will! I will return the Green, Green God tonight!” Yet did she cling to me, sobbing her fears for me, holding me back. Gently I freed myself, forced her down upon the couch, and caught up the rattan basket. She lay, now, with her face hidden in her arms, her whole form shaking with slow, silent sobs. I put my revolver into her little hand and closed those dear fingers about the butt. “T will return to you soon, my Golden Feather of Flame,” I said reassuringly; then grimly: ‘But if they should come before I return, use that—use that, holding it as you have seen me hold it. Turn this long cold end away from you—so. Press with your 195 first finger on this—this trigger. There will | be a loud sound, a spit of flame, a jump all along your arm. But do not be frightened; do not fear. That loud sound and all will scare them, if it does not kill them—one of them, anyway!’ I was out of the Elephant Cave then, leaving her alone in the dark. But I was not abandoning her—far from it. She would be, in this venture, not a help but a hin- drance tome. And alone and singlehanded, I was making, then, a last and most desper- ate attempt to return the Green, Green God, so that everything once more might be well. It was all up to me. And this was no time now to go a round- about way, no time even to go skulking under the shadows of palms and growths. This was a tragic time, a most desperate time when that which I would do I must do swiftly, boldly. I was a man alone now, a white man. With the inevitable boldness of the white man in the face of overwhelming odds, full down the moon-lighted middle of that Avenue of Palms toward the Stone Dodo, I started running. No one stopped me. No sentry barred my way with the gaping muzzle of a long sumpitan; no Poonan ran ahead shouting an alarm into the night. Save the sound of my own quick footfalls, there was no sound at all in the night. And then the tattoo of my footfalls ceased, as I halted abruptly; for all of a sudden, as on a flutter of wind, a great sound had rolled to my ears. I stood now, suddenly tense and very still. And I looked ahead. | seam QUITE a distance ahead, but plain- ( J ly distinct in the open sweep of the avenue, the brightness of the moon, bulked the huge Stone Dobo. And it was lighted up now. It was glowing white with the incandescence of a thousand torches blazing inside, shining out through its in- numerable slits, and reflecting upon its white, white stone! I realized in a flash'then. There could be but one meaning to all those torches. The Poonan were gathered within! Even as I realized that, I noted a little black huddle of the Poonan clustered upon the top of that white cascade which was the Dobo stairs. They were clustered about the arched doorway of that Dodo like a swarm (E@ [AME Loxeyxe) cS ((0) )