Adventure Magazine Cover, August 18, 1921 — page 157: what you’re looking at

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

The Throwback the white man, his face glowing with ex- treme happiness. The white man raised a hand and gently stroked his forehead. “The M’Lungu is getting well?” the old man queried. ‘Perfectly well. The only trouble is I feel terribly stiff and as if some one had hit me on the head with a rock.” The old man laughed. “It was your head hit the rock instead,” he said. ‘“T must have been a fool, then.” Again the old man laughed. “Fools do not hit rocks with their heads for the same reason you did.” The white man stared inquisitively. “Shall I tell the AZ’Lungu? Is he strong enough?” the chief went on. “Oh, yes. My head thumps a bit, but I think I can stand all you will tell me. If I find it too much I will say so.” ‘Then I will tell you from the beginning. It is a long story, M’Lungu.” “All right. Iam listening.” With great detail the old chief recounted every incident from the day when he first saw the face of Charlie peering at him in terror from behind the rocks on the side of the kopje. How they had caught him and fastened him down, how they had brought the doctor to him and how he had at last become docile and been allowed to go about freely and even go shooting. Then he told him of the girl on horseback and the fight with the baboons, how he had slashed in and bravely saved her, how they “Stop it,’ the white man broke in just there. “As I didn’t know a single thing about it I don’t see that I did anything to boast about,” he objected. But the old man merely smiled and went straight on. How they had brought the doctor again, how he had explained that the white man would never recover his senses again—at which the white man grinned sheepishly—how he had lain almost two whole moons without speaking or seeming to know even so much as that he was alive and how that morning the old man had come sorrowfully to see his white friend, only to have his sorrow suddenly turned to joy at finding him awakened from his long sleep. “How long?” Charlie asked anxiously. “Tt is nearly two moons since you were hurt, M’Lungu, and it is five moons since I nest found-you.” I51 “Five months!” Charlie echoed. ‘Have I been out of the world all that time? And what happened to my wagon?” “They tell me your wagon went back, M’Lungu. Your Cape-boy and Kafir waited many days. Then a Kafir told them that you were dead and they went away fright- ened. Some of my men hunting the aardvark, the ant-bear, by night saw the wagon, but before they came to tell me of it it was gone too far for me to trace it. Gone I know not where.” “Was it a Kafir with two toes who fright- ened them?” the white man queried. “Vehbo, M’Lungu.” The white man struggled weakly to fix his pillows so that he could raise himself higher. The old man, noticing, stepped over and fixed them for him. Then he sat back against the wall once more. “A Kafir with red hair?” the white man queried again. “With red hair, MW’ Lungu.” For a while both men were silent. The white man’s eyes, fixed on the grass of the roof, were struggling to piece together and see the past. Striving and _ struggling. His errant brain was still wont to wander. His eyes came down. Nervously he turned to the old chief. “To what tribe does the brown girl be- long? She is not of your tribe, my father.” With eager face the old man rose quickly to his feet and stood at the side of the white man. “She is not of any tribe, M’Lungu. She is as white as the M’Lungu. As white as the Makewa himself.” “White?” “Vehbo, M’Lungu. White. But I have had to dress her as the young girls of my own people, and in the many years she has lived among us the sun has burned her brown.” Again the wandering brain fought to get away and the white man struggled to hold itin leash. The old man, patiently waiting, went back to his place by the wall. “Years?” the white man repeated weakly. “Why is she living with natives?” “YT found her, M’Lungu, just as I found you.” The old man held his hand out at the height of a toddling child. “T found her many, many, many moons ago. Found her when her head reached no higher than this.” COmiclbook ©