Adventure Magazine Cover, August 18, 1921 — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

74 It was quiet, cool, peaceful. The sweet freshness of morning was in the air. Within an hour it would be hot; by noon, stifling, sultry, and the long afternoon’s sun would seem a fever spot; the evening would be miserable with heat and insects and the stink of rank vegetation, of an unclean village. 66 t 9) said Brannigan. _ “Shut up,” said Rodgers, without mov- ing. “What ’re we goin’ to do? Be a-tellin’ me that, Rod.” Brannigan replied. “T told you. Take them when they ’re not looking an’ kill as many as we can.” Brannigan shook his head. That would not, he said, .do any good. The thing would be hopeless. There ought to be some way to get in well with the savages— he called them ‘‘haythens.” Lots of white men lived among them. Many of the tribes that made the most success at cutting out ships were led by white men, which showed it was possible to save your head. There had been fellows that had lived for years even among the bushmen. Rodgers may have heard, but he was not listening. Brannigan went on: “T’ve looked this shack over.” He pointed toward the rafters. “He’s got a few clay pipes an’ some beads left. A halfa case of tembac—an’ tobacco’s next to gin. Three guns here. So rusty they’d blow a man up to shoot ’em, if you could be a-findin’ anything to shoot in’em. We know niggers, you and me. There’s some way. Try to think, Rod.” And Rodgers answered— “Oh, eee The black young cannibal who cooked for Webb came shuffling along, and grinned at them. Soon they heard him clattering pans in the cooking shack, and after an hour he brought in coffee made of stewed grounds, and served a pie-plate full of moldy biscuits. There were three mugs of coffee. Five minutes later the news that Weppy was dead would have been through the vil- lage; but Brannigan, acting without a moment’s previous thought, strode heavily across the bamboo floor and poked the corpse with his foot. “Hey, Webb. Up allhands here. Heave- oh. Tucker, me boy. Oh, well, stop along plenty much.” Adventure Brannigan carelessly picked up some sacking and threw it over Webb’s face; then, with a hard painful effort at good nature, he faced the young cannibal and pointed at the empty bottles: “Tim fella plenty drunk. Belly sick. No coffee stop along with him.” The young cannibal grinned; and when he had gone Brannigan raised the coffee with a hand that trembled so he spilt most of the cup before he sucked it gulpingly. “You're a fool,’ said Rodgers sullenly. “No. No. I tell you something will happen. Weneed time. To think. We’ve got to think. Nobody will know today. Webb is drunk.” “And we are crazy,”’ Rodgers answered in a tone of depressed finality. All morning they sat there moodily, not daring to leave lest the secret get out; and when natives came, wanting tobacco or fish-hooks, Brannigan tried to _ explain amusingly that the trader was drunk and asleep. He was anxiously alert to see re- sponsive grins on their faces. Rodgers sat without speaking, looking at him with steady, contemptuous eyes. The only comment he made at all was— “Aw, stop that play-acting an’ let’s fight it out.” “T’m playin’ for time, Rod. Something ’sgot to happen. Just you see.” What happened was that about the mid- dle of the afternoon the word went in and through the village that Weppy was dead; and natives came up and squatted in a semicircle in front of the doorway to find out about it. The young cannibal cook had spread the word. He did not know whether or not the trader was dead. A native does not consider it necessary to be accurate, and is likely to declare what he imagines with the emphasis of fact. This is due less to dis- honesty, of which Solomon Islanders have as much as other people, then to a lack of shades and nuances in the language. He noticed that Webb had not changed his position an inch in eight hours, so he went forth and said that the white men had killed the trader. When a man dies, somebody has killed him. The village wanted to know; and Orokgo himself came. Now that Webb was dead, and his trade-goods could be had for the taking, the deceased had become even more dear to Orokgo. And he scowled mightily. The cannibals, naked except for wisps of COMGHOO S ©