Adventure, January 20, 1922 — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

4 Adventure spill most of the liquor in the sand; and as if in entire sympathy with his distaste for . the company he was forced into, the cocka- too flapped his wings in the face of the cup- bearer and screamed raucously, , Another man seized the bird in a horny fist invulner- able to the fearsome hooked beak that pecked at it. “Here, Mat, give the surly bird a draft 0’ singing juice,” he cried, and forced open the screaming bird’s beak. With a howl of boozy mirth they poured rum down the bird’s gullet, then set it on the ground and waited, while the owner of the misused bird struck resounding but in- effective blows impartially upon all with a futile bamboo staff. “Heathens!” cried he whom they called the Schoolmaster. ‘‘Heathen swine! Does neither shame nor pity dwell in you? To treat a poor bird: “Squawk!” screamed the parrot with its wings dragging in the sand, its crest awry, and its head held sidewise ludicrously. “Squawk! Holla, holla! There’s blood on the moon! Ha, ha, ha-a-a-ah!” Then, while the roaring tipplers surged and rocked with appreciative merriment and his master was hurled roughly away so that he was powerless to interfere, the bird staggered in a narrow circle with rolling gait and screeched a doggerel stave: “The Rover hides in Aves when he runs. Rum and wenches there he braves—not guns!* Boldly will he boast of fight, when the foe- man’s not in sight, But from a man-o’-war, how he runs!” The bedraggled cockatoo concluded his amazingly lucid song with a _ prolonged screech which startled his wild, free fellows in the palmettos; then he deliberately buried his beak in the warm earth, walked three times around it dragging his wings noisily, and at last toppled over and lay quiet in complete stupor. His tormentors greeted this last act with boisterous mirth; all except two, older, fiercer-looking men than the rest, who scowled down at the parrot and from it to its master standing alone where they had thrust him. He met their black scowls with a bland, innocent gaze, in keeping with the character they had given him of a harmless, all but imbecile creature with a man’s body and an angel’s voice, possessing neither feelings nor wit, “The bird has more wit than his mas- ter,” growled one with savage emphasis. “A bird learns no more than his teacher knows,” retorted the other as savagely. “Yonder fowl’s teacher, whoever he was, knows a plaguy sight too much. Hullo! You Schoolmaster chap, come here!” The Schoolmaster started to obey. Sud- denly he stopped, his gaze turned toward the settlement beyond the thicket of organ- palms; and from that moment he seemed oblivious to the pirates and their commands. Light footsteps sounded in the crisp grasses and fallen palm-fronds, and he caught sight of color—vivid color such as men never wore, be they.»swaggering pirate blades or dandies of the courts. The two pirates leaped toward him together, while their mates, less bold perhaps, slunk away to their barbecue. “T hailed you,’ one reminded him, and with the reminder dealt him a blow which sent him reeling against the other ruffan. “T hailed ye, too,” that worthy rejoined, and straightened the victim with another heavy thump. rot? “Who taught yonder: par- Hey? Sing out, lad.” THE Schoolmaster was not a small man. He stood fully as tall as any man on Aves, and his frame seemed built as-strongly. His wrists were stout, and hair grew on them as on his fingers, his face was tanned and ruddy, its lines were strong-hewn and of no weakling type. Yet he submitted to the mishandling like a sheep, or at least so it seemed. Just once, when a blow split his lips and drew blood, did a smoldering devil leap to life in his steady, gray eyes; it was quelled in an instant, and again he was the harmless, innocent lack-wit, the singing prisoner of the pirates’ settlement. But while that flash lived, some of the fire that caused it must have sped his hands also, for his two assail- ants found themselves flung off with a force that brought them crashing against the palm-trunks and left fiery specks dancing before their eyes. Before suspicion could more than sprout in their woozy brains, a ringing voice, clear and musical as a bell, halted their sport, and between them and their victim stepped a gorgeous creature of flamboyant handsomeness. “Have done, Doggett! Back, Rando!’ the woman cried sharply, and a hand on each broad chest thrust them aside. Gomichbook (EO)