Adventure Magazine Cover — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

576 Adventure lagoon tempted to this step; at any ratea_ clearsky. A vivid picture flashed through flagstaff was planted, sheds were put up his mind of the roaring streets of Sydney; of for the good Australian anthracite, and pro- the theaters, the cafés, the bars where he vision was made for a resident keeper. Most meta friend at every turn; and as he looked of the coal is still there: the flag still flies, over the cloudless circle of untroubled sea and the keeper is visited by a gunboat once a sick horror of the place came upon him, in four or five months; but the same keeper an overpowering terror of the sky and the seldom sees many visits of the ship. water, of everything that was so beautiful Coulson accepted the berth because he and so unhuman, so that he crept back had played the prodigal son in Melbourne _ trembling into his little bungalow with the and Sydney and had come to the end ofeven sweat streaming down his face. his husks. He knew it would be lonely, but For a time—he could never have told how he did not think he would mind. He would long—Coulson scarcely ate or slept. He have time for meditation and for reading. tramped the beaches, he paddled far out to He had always had a great idea of improv- sea, trying mechanically to find relief in ing his mind, and he packed in his chest a __ fatigue, and finding none. All day the great “History of Europe,” in seventeen volumes, blue circles glared at him unwinkingly, green cloth, gilt, which he had got from a mockingly; he hated them; at night the man who owed him thirty pounds. blues were merely three shades darker and It was a ten days’ runfrom Sydney. They fired with incandescent planets, and he set down his chest in the galvanized-iron loathed them. And day and night the house on the beach, and Coulson saw the merciless pulse of the surf beat like a swing- steamer evaporate into a smudge of smoke ing pendulum in his brain. He could never on the glittering horizon. Turning to look get beyond hearing of that sound. It was round, he could see almost the whole extent the very voice of the solitude. At mo- of his domain. The clustered palms rustled ments it seemed that he could endure no unceasingly in the wind, with the flagstaff more, and he would fling himself down and standing bare among them, and the ugly sob and curse in rage and loneliness. heaps of coal below. The surf circled him rhythmically with its monotonous “‘s-sk— BUT this period of torment wore it- crash! s-sh—crash!”’ Sky and sea were as self out. His nerves became dulled, empty and shining as twin silver mirrors, and Coulson regained a little of his and between the double immensities the old equanimity. It was not the same, island seemed like a speck under the glaring however. The almost narcotic peace of the lens of a great microscope. first days was gone, and he found himself Thus began the strangest period of Coul- sinking into a black melancholia. Never son’s life. At first he found it as peaceful had he been so conscious, with a strange and pleasant as he had anticipated. He _ terror, of the omnipotent forces around him. bathed in the surf; he fished from a canoe; The wind in the palms seemed to murmur he looked for pearls; he read his ‘‘History threats or warnings. Sky and sea were full of Europe” to the middle of the first volume, of menace, and he watched the revolution and then marked the place in case he should _ of the days with suspicion. He felt certain ever want to come back to it. The atmos- that disastrous events of some sort were phere of the island was not favorable to hard about to take place, and his heart was filled reading, but he discovered’that there was a witha sullen bitterness against the men who mild amusement to be derived from solitaire had exiled him on this reef to be the play- games of euchre and seven-up, his right thing of these invisible powers. hand against his left. He played checkers This state of nervous expectancy lasted in the same way, and tried chess, but gave for weeks, but nothing happened. -Now and it up; it was too much like trying to lift again, to relieve the strain, he resumed his oneself by one’s boot-straps. games of cards, his right hand against his It was a foregone conclusion that this left, and it was through this amusement that could not last. Only a saint or an idiot can he came to his great discovery. endure solitude, it is said, and Coulson was In these highly introspective games he neither. He had been there about a month always identified himself with his left hand; when the sudden sense of his hideous isola- the cards he dealt to the right he considered tion struck him like a thunderbolt from a_ as those of his opponent, and he could not COnMMCMOOCKKS. ECO