Adventure Magazine Cover, December 10, 1922 — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

Benefit of Doubt carried the litter, and who shoved and dragged the judge, complied without demur; so the headmen were presented with a fazt accompli, which like possession is nine points of almost any argument. The ex- Brahman ordered his own party to take the prisoners away, and himself stood guarding the retreat exactly in the middle of a narrow jungle path, like a swag-bellied Cerberus. “The Khalifate Committee takes charge of all white prisoners,” he announced. “‘Whoever conceals or neglects to hand over a white prisoner will be punished. You are allowed to keep all other loot,” he added, as if that were a concession granted by incon- trovertible authority. It was cleverly done. The moment was accurately chosen. The raiders wanted to go home and eat, brag, sleep. They decid- edly did not want to go to Podanaram and argue with men who were almost certain to have the best of any argument except pos- sibly force. The headmen could have ac- complished nothing by going without their following, who would almost certainly have refused to go, and all who were in favor of not carrying litters or pully-hauling corpu- lent kadis* said, “Aye.”’ The “Ayes” had it. The raiders sought their own villages, one of which was that in which King lay nurs- ing a bruised head and Mahommed Babar was establishing himself. And so it happened that after many hot hours and much imprecation the judge and his wife were presented like captured ani- mals before the door of a temple that would have stirred the judge’s archeological lees on any other occasion. Mrs. Wilmshurst had recovered -con- sciousness. In fact she had done that some hours ago, but had played ’possum for fear of being made to walk again ijn high-heeled shoes. The litter lay on the stones of the temple forecourt and she sat on it, staring and being stared at by a row of Moslems, who varied all the way from cardinal-like sanctity to perfect ruffianism., They broke no rules. As ever in such cases, they were nearly all foreigners— mostly from places as far removed as New York is from Mexico. The sprinkling of native-born Moplahs among them was enough, but no more than enough to lend a skimpy patriotic flavor to-the whole, as if a Moplah or two had felt obliged to import advisers. Enough Moplahs, in fact, were * Judge. 43 there to take full blame for the whole com- mittee’s actions, and being ignorant savages they were swamped meanwhile—bewildered —almost ignored—but kept-in a suitable state of amenity by dint of flattery and bribes. Their day of disillusionment was coming, when the time should come to surrender and send in those responsible for outrages. For the present the Moplahs stood long-haired, open-mouthed, marvelling at fortune that had sent them British prisoners. The men from Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Aden, Peshawar and the far North saw fit to be more polite to the judge and his wife than the Moplahs might have been if left to themsleves. More polite and less agreeable. The Moplahs would have grinned and gloated, but would have fed them and let them wash. There was a table, looted from where only Allah knew, but a good, teak, Christian table, set under the temple portico on the thousand-year-old flagstones just within the limit of the shade so as to have the advan- tage of whatever breeze was moving. Around that were chairs—one each for the Com- mittee, some of whom, Moplahs especially, had never sat on chairs until fate pitch- forked them into such prominence. They took their places, with an _ oily-haired Moplah at the table head for sake of the advertisement, nearly all cross-legged but some enduring the European posture as, for instance, Mrs. Wilmshurst endured her shoes, and the judge and his wife were re- quested to stand at the end of the table opposite the chairman. The language elected was English, prob- ably because the choice implied a patroniz- ing air toward the judge. The chairman had nothing to say. He stuck his tongue in his cheek, displayed his magnificent teeth, and lolled with his elbows on the table, making an occasional scrawl on paper with a quill pen, perhaps to dis- guise the fact that he could neither read nor write. He was a very obvious figurehead and none too beautiful. SB was an undersized dapper little =z Delhi Moslem, seated on the chair- man’s right, who looked and spoke as if he might have been a practising lawyer. His mild brown eyes were only mild at the first impression. They were unflinching really— THE man who opened on the judge Gcomichbooks Eo