Adventure, February 1917 — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

os Nobody’s Island doned the effort almost at once, conscious that it was too late; instead, he swore, €X- cused himself, and then swore again. “Ben, you forget yourself, don’t you?” asked Edith, holding the paper with both hands and scanning it closely. Her face was the color of the sheet she held. “T’ve just remembered myself,” said Slade, suppressing with difficulty another exclamation. that.” : “But it happens I did,” answered Edith, folding up the paper with a mechanical neat- ness that showed her thoughts were else- where. “Don’t you suppose we’d better discuss it?” “T suppose one must expect a woman to discuss. It’s her strong suit,’’ was the an- swer. ‘“The female sex might be defined as the sex that talks things over. My dear little—Joan—what good can it do to any one to worry over the fact that a reward has been offered for information leading to the discovery of the causes of Godfrey Campbell’s death?” ‘“‘A reward of one thousand pounds,” said Edith, She was sitting by the table now; her face was suddenly different from what it had been. The rope about her neck, so long for- gotten, had given a nipping jerk—here, on her safe desert island; here, at the ends of the earth. “TI know who is offering it,’ she added. “Chris Campbell, Godfrey’s first cousin. They were more like brothers—brought up together, Chris was—fond of—Godfrey. It seems odd. If he could have reformed him, he would. He would have done a good deal for him, And Barker, Sellars and Sellars are his solicitors. I never met him; he was at sea all that year, when— But it’s certain- ly Chris.” “Well, if it was fifty Chrises it doesn’t alter the situation,” asserted Slade. He was horribly vexed ‘with himself for having allowed her to see the paper. “T wonder!” said Edith. V AFTER the storm, the morning was very fair, and as the launch ripped along through the channels and cays of the little island group, unimaginable won- ders of color were displayed. Each fairy “T never meant to let you see. and went to school together, , 23 islet, feathered with white-stemmed palms, had its circle of shallows bright as aqua- marine; the wide under-water reefs, from were of an unnamable hue between tur- quoise and malachite; the sea itself, trans- lucent milky blue, seemed to laugh beneath the light-blue tropic sky. There were islands and islands in this scantily known, little- visited group of Scratchley, most of them mere toys, a bou- quet of palm set on a tablet of white sand; a high rock garlanded with falling vines: but some of them good-sized areas of grass and forest, with blue hills in the back- ground, and others large, low flats of sand and scanty trees. The greenness of all the places was their chief wonder. One felt that one had never. seen green before. The color, in the strong morning sun, struck you like a shout; such greens, such blues, such marryings of ‘both, not brush and color, nor pen and ink, could paint. And in the distance, the far distance, New Guinea’s lone, enormous ranges, black- blue, sinister, guarded by rampart on ram- part of foothills, ridge on ridge of precipice, torrent-riven gorge on gorge. No man won easily to those dragons of the mountain world; of the few who carried the defenses and assailed them close at hand, there were fewer still who returned. Out on the launch, far from land, you could see the swing and trend of the coun- try, and make of the map a living, visible thing. And Edith, knowing that this was but a limb of the strange beast that lies upon the atlas as New Guinea, and that in all this part and all the rest together, there were but a few hundreds of white people— ’ “which the Black Snake kept carefully away, : that here, as far as her eye could reach over the fairy islands and high-looming coasts, there were perhaps not a single dozen— Edith felt almost frightened. “T feel as if the country would get up and bite me,” she laughed. “T understand,” said Slade, at the wheel, his short thick hair blown about by the wind, his eyes looking out as a Viking’s eyes may have looked over some lonely bay in Vinland the unknown. the elemental. It’s like that splendid yarn of Wells, where a man gets on a time ma- chine that takes him back or forward as he likes, and is a bit scared when he finds him- self chucked into several thousand—or COMIC OOOKS “Tt’s the terror of . (E@) S|