Adventure, February 1917 — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

88 standing stone-still on ie hill below, heard and wondered at the gushing melody. Welcome, sweet spring-time, we greet in song, Murmurs of gladness fall on the ear—— Never before had Harold Page, New Guinea’s only nightingale, sung so well. It was a pure fountain of crystal song. Page, down on the sun-parched track be- low, forgot the blasting heat, forgot his dis- appointment, remembered nothing but the sweetness of that song. _ “Lord, Lord!” he breathed, “it might be her, herself. He’s improving wonderfully! I never heard him sing so well. It’s clip- ping a song-bird’s wings to keep him—and yet, it would just be the death of her if I let him go to disgrace her with royalty and all. Besides—”’ a cunning look came into his face—‘‘her payments are small, but sure. Now Harold—he’s not sure. Bless the boy, I know him. As to this reward or blackmail, or whatever it is—ten to one he’ll never get it. But if he does—why, the law gives a man his son’ s earnings when the son’s not seventeen.” The song was over. The captain sat down to rest; it is not prudent to rest in the New Guinea sun, but his aging legs had had enough for the moment. He sat on a stone that almost scorched him through his clothes, and idly he turned the ground about with the stick he carried, thinking the while. “He sings like a bird, and he’s been as gay as a bird all day,” ran his thoughts. “Tf I was a superstitious fellow, I’d think he had some bad luck coming, for things go by contraries. Sing before breakfast, cry before night. And cry before breakfast sing before night. I’ve been feeling like a hank of chewed string all day. Where’s my lJuck coming from?” The china-green sea frothed over pearly reefs below. It had a falsely cool and re- ~ freshing sound. Alone of all the myriad birds of the forest, the leathernecks talked on through the afternoon heat. “Fanny’s lost her shoe,” called one. “Fanny’s lost——” “Somebody stole my piripos,” joined in another complainingly. ‘Somebody stole my piripos.” “Piripos—South Sea for trousers,” said the captain. ‘“‘Ain’t he plain! Well, he hasn’t got them now, so they must have been— There’s another.” Adventure = It was the old call: “a “Do oysters chew tobacco? Do oysters chew——” They all took up their cries together now, and the clatter became maddening. The captain’s nerves, frayed by weeks of un- limited whisky, revolted. “T can’t stand the beggars,”’ he said, pet- tishly striking the loose coral sand of the track with his stick, And instantly he forgot the leathernecks as if they had never been. “Somebody stole,” went on the trouser- ~ less bird. “Fanny’s lost her foe Fanny’s lost— chew tobacco. Somebody stole Fanny— Do oysters—Fanny chew tobacco——” The clatter swelled to a chorus. Page did not hear a note of it. He was staring, with quickened breath, at something that his stick*had thrown up from under the sand—a small lump of putty-like stuff, ly- ing at his toe. He could scarcely make up his mind to lift it. It was so like—and yet it mightn’t be. He bent down and snatched at it, as if it might possibly bite. “The devil!” was what he said. And again, ‘“The devil!” “So that’s it!” he said in a few seconds, gasping like a hen on a hot day. “Gold, indeed! There’s things better than gold!” “Why,——!”he muttered with a cautious remembrance of Harold, not so far above. “Tt’s a fortune, if he’s getting that! Am- bergrease! But where?” He jumped to his feet. The weariness was gone. “T’ll find it—or die,”’ he said. “Why, the beggar! What does he know of such things? A sailor like me, now—I can run it down. Hooroo!” He slipped the little bit of ambergris in his pocket and went lightly up the hill. That night, more than half drunk, he got out his mandolinetta and played like Ober- on, King of the Fairies, while Harold, silent for once, sat watching him with curious eyes. — “Why don’t you swing—sing—tonight?” said the captain; he had got into an odd way of misplacing similar words lately, drunk or sober. “Don’t feel like it,’”? answered Harold. “It’s jolly odd, but I feel as if I’d never want to sing again.” “Well, you did a fine swan-song, then,” - EOMMICLOOOKS Co)