Adventure Magazine Cover, February 3, 1921 — page 161: what you’re looking at

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

Goomasaka Makes Good it as if she had been fired from a einai tube, and the third flail-stroke—delivered quick as a cobra strikes—should have knocked into the water the thirsty spider- monkey who knew he was out of reach of the snout end, and thought he was of the tail. The spider-monkey, who would have made a good advertisement for any anti- fat medicine, retired up-tree as if he had been thrown there by some giant hand, and Goomasaka sank backward into her own wake with a most suggestive sigh; while the flaming macaws aloft called down curses upon her armored head m a hubbub that would have roused a deaf man. Thereafter all movement went from Goomasaka and she relapsed into a log again for some hours. -Till, in fact, the “six o’clock bee’—and the same was a cicada—began to grind stones—at least, that was what it sounded like—on the roof- garden of the forest above. Some bird things, unheeding, persisted in asking— “What o'clock?” Another wished to know— “Who are you?” and a third began call- ing at thirty-second intervals to some one ta-— “Whip-poor-will!” The last were nightjars, and the same presently began to wheel over the water like giant brown moths, and a big, red, howling monkey started booming up the echoes like some heathen war-drum. Then a vampire bat with a face like a plenipoten- tiary extraordinary from hell flitted past with no more noise than a piece of paper, and the dark curtain fell almost suddenly, as it does in the tropics, and it was night. Then the tale—and the tail—began to move again. So did Goomasaka, across the black waters. But there were so many ghastly things moving about across the black waters, anyway—great yellow turtles, tortoises of pantomime proportions, fish of nightmare avoirdupois and appearance, overgrown lizards, and snakes—-that one female or cow alligator more or less, in love or out of it, really did not make much, difference. She might easily have been lost or overlooked in the genera! excess of horrors. Nature, however, who has a soft place in her heart for lovers and for nobody else, had seen to this. She had given Goomasaka a voice, and not the others, though they 155 splashed beastily. And straightway Goo- masaka. lifted now that voice up. “Iwas some unoiled grunt. When you had heard it, you went away. And the extraordinary thing about it was that you could not help hearing it. It was the most amazingly . penetrating croak [I ever knew, and the most weird serenade imaginable. But its effect upon that silence of the forest, or rather that silence now that it was quite dark, broken only by the still steady hum of hordes of insects, like the drone that you hear in a sea-shell when you put the same to your ear—its effect. was, the most uncanny of all. INSTANTLY, as if the voice of Goomasaka had started them, the 7 face of the black waters became literally alive with the steady intermittent grunting of female alligators seeking a hus- band. Nor did it stop there. Swimming everywhere, searching up the tunmels of the creeks—tributaries—and half-stagnant ditches, smothered over with palms, mar- antas, heliconias, begonias, arums and tree- ferns, Goomasaka and the others continually grunted them strange unlovely love-call, pe- culiar in its subdued far-carrying quality. But the night held no reply. Only the insects spoke, an undercurrent of sound, making the silence the more; not less, | noticeable than ever. They and the occa- sional splash of a fish—perhaps a thousand- pounder, for all I know—or of a turtle held the dark together. Goomasaka swung about at what ap- peared to be the limit of her patrol, grunt- ing steadily, and seemed to be half-thinking of food, since Cupid would have none of her, apparently, when suddenly there burst forth a hoarse, harsh, unlovely bellow. Goomasaka whipped round toward. the sound. For a fraction of a second Gooma- saka paused only to make up her clammy mind, then shot across the reaches like a thing possessed. And every female alli- gator within hearing did likewise—racing for a husband! | Goomasaka only was not the first to arrive because she was not the nearest. Therefore, when she did, she found a re- markable scene. A pale, weak moon crawled over the forest-roof and partially lighted it up. It was lugubrious. In a trench-like inlet from the river, -a stagnant dead place full of decay, half-choked COMMICLOOOkKS (C@