Adventure Magazine Cover — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

One Lone White Man to drop abruptly, continued to do so for another three hundred yards or more, and then leveled up. The jungle thinned out and merged into a park-like land intersected with little streams and rolling hillocks. The sea could be seen beyond the rocky cliffs in the dis- tance, a wide expanse of laughing blue shim- mering in the sunlight. The trader halted, and with a bound found cover in the brush. No less quick ‘ was Maru, for full ahead lay a large village through which the pathway continued and ran. Women were moving about in large numbers, evidently engaged in cooking the noonday meal, and here and there a man could be seen attending to his weapons, or lying idly in the shade under a tree. Near to where the trader crouched a little spring bubbled up out of the ground and chattered away down to the village, to settle in a little lake far below, before narrowing to a river, joining with other streams, and running into the sea. So far the two adventurers had met no one, but coming straight toward them up the pathway were four of the Little People, three of them men and the other a woman. They were evidently bound on a hunting expedition, and the woman, beside bending nearly double under a heavy bundle of what looked like skins, also carried a heavy sling, and a skin-pouch full of stones at her girdle. All were stark naked, and grotesquely tattooed. There was a shout from the village, rising above the murmur of the voices, and the on- coming party halted and looked back. A woman came to the edge of the low huts and shouted something in harsh gutturals, apparently to the effect that the party had forgotten something, for two of the men after a brief consultation hurried back, while the other man and the woman came on. The trader sighed with relief, for he had thought they had been discovered. He grew tense again as he saw his opportunity. He whispered to. Maru, who nodded and crept silently from his side, a little way nearer the village. In silence the two descendants of the earth’s childhood came on, the man leading the woman by some dozen yards or more, his eyes bent on the ground and his long throwing-spear dangling carelessly from his hand. They drew level and passed the crouching two, and went on. Some subtle 87 instinct, perhaps some sixth sense, such as all wild creatures possess, told the man that something was the matter, that everything was not as it should be. He suddenly halted, tensed, and sniffed at the air like a dog. A low mutter of sur- prize escaped his lips as his eyes fell on the deep track in the soft earth of the pathway, where the trader’s boot had dug deep as he leaped for cover. The man commenced to turn around, and at the same instant the trader caught him under the ear with a gun- butt. : Maru leaped on the woman, jerked the load from her head, knocked her down with one sweeping blow and hurriedly drew the sack he carried over her head. A few turns of cord round it, and shouldering the load he set off up the pathway at a run. The trader rapidly followed, leaving the man where he had fallen. For a moment there was tense silence. The very life-throb of the jungle seemed to cease. Only could be heard the pad-pad of naked feet and shoes on the dried earth. Then rose from the village below such a howl as the panther makes when he scents his prey, before he falls into the silent way of his stalking. The blood of the trader ran cold for a moment, and hastily twisting as he went forward he saw, before he turned a bend in the path, a dense crowd of the Little People, clustered between the huts, gazing up at him in astonishment and rage. Then he vanished from their sight, and the blank walls of the jungle met his startled gaze. There was a mad rush on the part of the villagers for weapons. There is hardly a crime so bad among a phallic-worshiping people as woman-stealing. It was unheard- of besides for strangers to tread the sacred ground of the coast and live. Signal-fires sprang up from the most unlikely places, and the Little People came pouring from all sides to recapture the woman—who was communal property—and to avenge the in- sult that had been offered. Hardly feeling his burden Maru swept sure-footed over the rocking, quivering bridge and, after running some little way down the beaten path on the other side,of the ravine, plunged aside into the jungle. He knew just what todo. Everything had been prepared and planned beforehand. He was the decoy, or rather the woman he bore was. He ran on, stumbling over COnniclboooks C@