Adventure Magazine Cover, August 18, 1921 — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

By CORDON YOUNG Author of ‘The Frame-U p,” ‘Sir Galahad and the Badger,” etc. OTH the men were half-drunk, but they squatted somberly on the coarse mat and said nothing. memes The eyes of one went restively about, glancing from shadowed corner to black doorway as if looking for something that might be invisible. The other man stared dead ahead. Now and then their gaze met across the wavering flame tip of a candle in a bottle’s neck; now and then, too, one would raise a square-face, suck at the gurgling mouth and in silence hand it to his companion. Moths plunged at the candle, and hands- ful of them, drunk with fire, lav on the mat. The night was black. Through the door- way the men could see the thin line of luminous foam drawn around the outer reefs and feel the thud of the combers that came rolling up the sand on the other side of the island. The weird night noise of the bush, the screeching and clicking of insects, clash and grating of wind-rubbed branches, hoot of birds, even the rattle and click of pebbles on the beach, touched their ears with depress- ing, almost harrowing emphasis, though they were rough and desperate fellows, both of them. A corpse, burned out by fever, lay behind them in the stiff attitude of painful death. The thin face was bearded; the skeleton chest lay bare; the shriveled bony legs were thrust into muslin drawers. “Oh, !’ said the older man hoarsely, glancing over his shoulder. ‘“____? said the other fellow, his eyes fastened unseeingly straight before him. Both meant the same thing; and each had made a sort of prayer. It is only when prayers are made aloud and long, for the ears of men, that they are nimble with the inflection of graceful words. These fellows knew nothing of praving and there was no knee-bending humbleness about them. ‘They were in the devil’s pickling-jar, and the lid was ready to be screwed down. ‘An’ the blighter had to up an’ die!” said the elder man, poking the short neck of a gin bottle through his bushy beard. He was a burlv fellow, thick and short, with a bull’s neck and shoulders. His voice was like that of a man hoarse with a cold and seemed to come from somewhere clown in his belly instead of his throat. The nose was broken, the forehead scarred, the hair thick and uneven. He called himself Brannigan and said that he had been sent out for missing an English landlord. The fowling-rifle was a bit rusty from much lying out in rain and dew of nights waiting for the chance. If he hadn’t missed the 69 COmicloolks CO 5}