Adventure Magazine Cover — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

44 their whole minds to their festival, and the house shook with the shouts of the merry- makers and the thunder of the drums. We stopped trying to talk. In that uproar it was useless. So the time passed until the feast, which the older women tended, was ready for eating. We-four squatted on the chief’s mats and ate our fill. After a rest, the festa started up once more. Tiring of the scene, Pedro and I went strolling around the place, looking at the great jars, some of which would hold twenty gallons each; at big bags knitted from fiber- twine, hides of jungle beasts, blow-guns and spears and arrows, and anything else that happened to catch our eyes. Nobody paid the least attention to us now, and we ex- amined every sort of thing the tribe owned. While we were doing this the drumming stopped and some sort of ceremony took place at the chief’s place. By the time we lounged back there it was over. - Much shouting and laughing followed. We found Senhor Tom and Marion standing before Andirah and smiling as if they did not know what it was all about but were willing to help the fun along. As the crowd swarmed again around the liquor-jars I asked Senhor Tom what had been done. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. ‘‘Making us members of the tribe, I guess. The old boy held our hands and mumbled some stuff I didn’t make out, and everybody held a hullabaloo. I never saw it done before, though Vve been among Tucunas quite a bit. Hope this celebration ends today, so we can get back to camp and start on to Viciado. I’m getting tired of sticking around here.” He yawned, turned away, and went strolling about the house with the girl. ' “Tupahn and his woman are now truly the brother and sister of the Bat. Is it so, heramuhm?” Pedro asked. “Tt is so, herayi. With his own hands Andirah has taken them into the tribe and put them together according to the custom.”’ We looked hard at the old man and at each other. “Put them together?” Pedro repeated. ‘So the Bat has said, my son. As he has put together for life many a young man and his mate, so has he done with these new ones of our tribe, Tupahn and his woman. Let, them struggle no more before me as | they did.” Adventure Again we stared. Then we roared with laughter. “Senhorl Senhorital—I mean Senhora!” Pedro shouted. ‘Come here!”’ “Well?” boomed Senhor Tom. ‘Don’t get fresh, old chap. Just remember this is Senhorita Marshall.” “She is not, comrade! She is now Senhora Mack! With the proper ceremony, you two have just been married by the Bat!”’ XIV Wg) THE long shadows of another ™) morning stretched across the clear- ___| ing when we four came out through the narrow doorway of the Bat’s maloca and walked around the corner on our way to the forest. Behind us most of the Tucunas still were asleep. They had kept up their noisy festi- val until late at night, pausing only when they were too tired—and too drunk—to con- tinue longer; and now the tribe-house was full of snores. The old chief, though, who had stayed in his hammock and taken little of the rum, was wide-awake and unwilling to have us go so soon. He had told us the holiday would not end for two or three days more, and protested stubbornly against our leaving today. But Senhor Tom had finally pacified him by saying he must settle with certain enemies at Viciado, and that the foes of Tupahn could not be allowed to escape. To this the Bat agreed. He had told us, too, what Pedro and I had suspected—that the creek where our canoes lay did not run to Viciado. But he had also told us, after we explained where our camp was, that we could reach the right stream without going back to the fork. A short half-mile below our camp, he said, a very narrow but fairly deep arm of water connected this creek with the one on which we must travel. He would have aroused men and sent them to guide us, but we told him to let them lie; we needed no. escort. And now, with our farewells said and the new day bright around us, we walked across the open space and once more entered the shady path behind -the maloca—the path where Pedro and I had lurked and seen the bat-mask go by on its way to the hut of the foul priest, and where we later had run through the night dragging a blind man. This time the blind man walked ahead, ES Gomichoo (C (C©) S|