Adventure, February 1917 — page 79: what you’re looking at

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

Nobody’s Island Campbell, fairly on his own stamping- ground now, took charge of the vessel and towed her back to Lalang Harbor, with a very scared crew of blacks aboard. The delay had not been long—three days altogether—but he did not quite like to think of what it might mean, since Mrs, Slade had certainly gone in at that point, and as certainly had not been heard of again. As for Murua—Murua had not quarreled with the delay. This captain, with his eyes of sailor-blue, and heart like the sea, was indeed more than old enough to be her fa- ther, but—the days were days of fairyland, the nights on deck, under the great white equatorial moon, with sea-fires breaking about the launch’s bow, were nights of won- der. Campbell was scarcely gray; his figure was young and active; under the moon no one saw his vanished youth. Under the moon, sitting by a girl with mermaid locks that strewed the deck, and soft voice and eyes and hands, the sailor found his vanished youth. He said the things that sailors will. Murua, half hidden in the mermaid hair, looked and was silent, and listened. And then she went to her little cabin, where the all-night-open port let in the salt smell of the sea, and wash of the waves along the vessel’s hull, she dreamed—dreamed the dream of the island girl—that the steamer, bringer of all pleasant things, had. brought to her—a lover. aa Campbell?” asked Murua. “Smell?” said the sailor. ‘I smell flowers like the heavy white things they have at weddings and funerals—and dead leaves and dirt—and rain, somewhere not far off.”’ “Nothing more?” “Don’t think so. Why?” “Because I think I do, Captain Campbell, and I’ve been so much in the bush that it isn’t very likely I’d be mistaken.” “Fee, fo, fi, fum, I smell the blood of.an Englishman!” hummed the captain care- lessly. He had been taking the day’s march through the forest as a kind of picnic, amusing himself with the sight of curious insects and beautiful birds, and ee XI. “DO YOU smell anything, Captain AL not at all about possible Lalang cannibals. Campbell, wisely, never crossed bridges till he came to them. Which may have ex- plained the fact of his being a young man at forty plus. “T wouldn’t undertake to say you did not,” said Murua dryly. “What I smell is a cooking fire, but it might turn out one way as well as another. It’s all according to whose cooking fire it is.” “Ah?” said the captain, picking a pea- green praying mantis six inches long off a bush, and setting it up on the palm of his hand, where it immediately knelt down and put up its treacherous spiked fore-legs in an attitude of unpretending piety. ‘‘Look at this beggar, he’s the funniest thing on earth. Pecksniff in an insect.” The mantis, with fore-legs upraised, turned its long-necked head toward Camp- bell and looked at him reprovingly out of two enormous eyes, “You disturbed my prayers,” it said as plain as actions could say. “Tf you put a grasshopper near him, he will take it in his arms and hold it tight while he eats it all up with a noise like a man crunching celery,” remarked Murua. “It is very disgusting, but somehow funny. Nearly all the birds and beasts in Papua are humorous. The common crow laughs like a man laughing till he chokes, and then begins again. And there are birds that bark, and mew, and ring bells, and crack whips, and chop wood. I’ve heard people talk of funny devils often enough, without meaning anything, but Papua is full of them. Things are both—they are funny, and devilish too. “Those laughing crows will follow you if you are lost, and sit on a log and laugh at you when they think you are dying, and come and pick your eyes out before you are dead. And the natives are so funny some- times you can’t help laughing at what they do. While all the time— Why, Pups and I arrested a man who had killed and eaten his wife, because he said she talked to him when he was making poetry!” “Come now, that’s too much, even from you, Miss Murua!” “It’s perfectly true. The man was the . tribal poet—they generally have one; he makes all their songs, and they give him presents when the songs are good.” “More than most white poets could say.” “And this man, Susu his name was, had a Gomicbooks ico