Adventure, February 1917 — page 57: what you’re looking at

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

'Nobody’s Island because the Government was down on it, partly because it was a short-sighted pol- icy. It cleared ground for the moment, she explained, but the natives were sure to take a treacherous revenge later on. All her varied stock of bush knowledge had been poured forth for Edith’s benefit; she had told her how to find camping ground, how to make a camp, how to get a view of where she was going, among the forests, by making the boys fell trees on the top of the highest hill she could find; she had told her how stores were protected against the constant rain of the upper alti- tudes, and the way to get dry sticks for fire on a wet night by splitting big ones open, -and what to do for the bites of leeches and scrub tick, and how to avoid being eaten by alligators when crossing a river. She knew that, given strength and endurance enough, the journey was no more impossible for Edith than for any new man, in this coun- try of Papua where every one might do what he or she could do. Still she was anxious. If only Pups would come back from Rossel—gigantic Pups, with his armed police, and his vigor- ous personality, and the whole authority of the Government at his back! One couldn’t feel uncertain of anything when Pups was about. But it was impos- sible to say when he would be back from Rossel, the last outlier of the long tail of New Guinea, far away, and seldom visited by anything in the shape of a vessel. He had his whaleboat, but a whaleboat takes weeks to come in from the outer edges of the scattered island country. No, Pups must be counted out. herself, even if she could have got a boat to go in, she could not have fitted out a sec- ond expedition with the few boys remaining on the island, and could not, in all proba- bility, have caught up or even found Edith without the aid of the Jamieson Island guide lent by Page. There was nothing to do but wait—espe- cially since Captain Page had inspected the launch, and pronounced that the boys had been monkeyi g with it, and there wasn’t the least chance of setting her to go unless another launch with a competent engineer in it happened to come along. For that, Murua hoped and almost prayed, ‘busying herself in the meantime with housekeeping, poultry tending, sewing, butterfly catching, and twenty - and - one - ‘As for 59 other occupations. She was never idle a moment; the neat khaki legs seemed to be always twinkling up and down the house and veranda, and the tied-back mass of hair to be swinging out behind as she passed rapidly by the captain, making the most of his invalid condition on a couch, or Har- old, lying on his back in the shady veranda, eating something and singing in the inter- vals. And always, passing the door, she threw a glance out toward the sea. LATE one night, sleeping under her net in the outer room, Murua was awakened by the sound that rouses an island dweller from the heaviest sleep— the pii-pit-pit of a screw. She sat up. It was full moon; the light made streaks of Chinese white upon the shining corduroy of the sago-stem walls. On the veranda outside, where a bunch of bananas hung, a flying fox was drumming about like an aero- plane, and the locusts’ chirr in the forest was loud as escaping steam. Nevertheless, she-could hear the beat of the screw. Some- thing was coming in. Murua listened, sitting up in bed. The pit-pit ceased. “It sounds very like the Diamond,’ she said to herself, “but I can’t think what would bring her up here. Pups couldn’t get the Government to let him have her when he asked, only a few weeks ago. I wonder, has the R. M. at Samarai heard anything and come himself? But if he had, he’d go straight to Jamieson Island.” A sharp rattle from Silence Bay an- nounced that the boat was dropping an- chor. Murua listened, but no dingey put out for shore. -“They’ll wait till morning,” she said. wonder—I do wonder!” Unrelieved wonder was not to be borne, with the anchorage in full view below the house. Murua slipped out of bed, put on a wrap- per, and went barefoot and silent on to the veranda. In the bright moonlight, she could see the Government launch, Dia- mond, lying at anchor far below, a toy boat on a sheet of silver glass. ee Looking through Captain Page’s binocu- - lars, Murua tried to find out who might be on board. She could see the engineer, a small plump man, standing on deck; beside him some one of medium height, in a white suit and Indian helmet. Gomichbook (E@)