Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 52: what you’re looking at

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

998 But if you have done three years good service, which means that you have avoided trouble with the local chiefs, sent down fat balance-sheets every quarter and not wor- ried the Agent General with complaints, you get a fat bonus. That is the Company’s way of getting round the fellows who go all to pieces when they find they are ‘“‘on their own” and get the swelled head or just bum ’round shooting “hippos” and leopards, or take to pombe—native beer. Perhaps it was because Mr. Marshall was so keen on his bit of farm that he went so strong on the bonuses. He had already sunk three of them in his few acres, one cow, chickens, fruit and vegetable-garden, but, as he told me, he wanted a fourth to put the dream on a substantial basis. Every mail-canoe would bring snapshots of the place, and the very canoe that brought the letter from the A. G., that smashed his hopes of this fourth bonus, brought also a picture of his wife, with the little baby girl on her shoulder, and a let- ter, which he let me see—same as I let him read mine. Do you recognize your own baby, Sidney, dear? Fancy, she is nearly three years old, and you have never seen your own child! Does she look as you think she looks, dearest? She is so like you, Sid- ney, that sometimes I can’t bear to look at her. It seems that my heart will break with longing to see you and fear of that dreadful fever. Oh, Iam so glad it is nearly all over and that I shall soon have you with me, never to leave me again! You will get that bonus, dear, and will never have to go back to that savage country. It seems too wonder- ful to be true. You will be home with the May and the cuckoo. I have set the front garden to daffodils and narcissus, so that the little home will look gay to you, for you should be home in early Spring. Mr. Marshall was awfully cut up over the letter, for we already knew that the A. G. would be mad when he got the Igobo bal- ance-sheets. And there was his letter, which Mr. Marshall hated to open. At last he savagely tore it open and read it out tome. The A. G. went over the mys- tery of the shortage, then finished up with very nasty insinuations: I am obliged to accept your explanations—the explanations of an officer of the Company. But it does seem to me that wereIin your place, I would, if only for my good name’s sake, make a determined effort to discover and stop this leakage. I very much fear that the London accountants will refuse to O. K. your balance-sheets, but will debit the shortage to your wage-account. Adventure He dropped the letter on the sheet that served us for tablecloth and his tired eyes rested on the photo of his wife and baby. Suffering Moses! ‘Make a determined effort to discover the leakage!’’ Hadn’t we lived the past months in determined effort? I couldn’t bear to see Mr. Marshall look- ing that way, so, just to keep his mind occu- pied, I went over the old, old ground— that it was one of the Sierra Leonese clerks in the barter store—they are a no-account mission-schooled bunch, to whom a little education is as oil to a snake’s slipperiness. I opined that one of the rascals was passing out stuff to a confederate. Mr. Marshall took me up irritably, ‘‘ Yes, yes; but who and howe” And not wait- ing my answer, he smashed his fist to the table, exclaiming vehemently, “If I dis- cover the filching fingers, I'll teach that native a trick that will furnish him night- mares for the rest of his unnatural life. I never had trouble before—I’ve always treated my blacks decently and bee treated decently by them.” : He stopped suddenly and threw up his head, listening to a shrill wailing that sobbed out above the nightly tom-tom dance in the compound. Then he flung out, ‘‘‘ Mam- my palaver,’ again,” and caught up his cane and hurried out. I snatched up my revolver and followed. We came on the negroes unnoticed, until Mr. Marshall’s white figure pushed among them, when they fell back, like quarreling school-children before the head-master. In the center of a ring of natives stood a girl and her father. The father was Ogo the tanner, who lived in the village just outside the compound. Before them were two suitors for the girl. One was Tiny, the giant whipper of the trading station; the other was a clerk named Mohara. Ogo was cunningly pitting one against the other, offering his girl to the highest bidder. I looked at Attalia to see if she had any preference, for it didn’t seem right that she should have no say. But she just stood there, her face a blank, her eyes looking down. | Tiny had exhausted his resources. All his worldly wealth was heaped on the sands before the greedy Ogo. There were trade cottons, cowries, a leopard’s skin and a bottle of ‘‘trade”’ gin. His big, flat, homely phiz was set in an expression of sullen sur- render. But Mohara’s sleek features wore Comicloooks 5}