Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 59: what you’re looking at

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

A Leak in the Jungle Trade hunch that the Emir had cunningly trapped him to Ilorin to expose his gin weakness, physical degeneracy and hated Christianity to the contempt of his ruffian court, and thus lay forever the Company’s bogey claimant to the Emiralty. Then the forest gloom closed in on us and the naked feet of my poor men were cut with hidden poisoned stakes, or a brushed bush would release a weighted spear. Cold chills chased down my spine like wind-wavelets over hay grass and I knew I was a coward. We entered a nar- row ‘‘wady,” with precipitous basalt walls, sentinelled with grotesque cacti, which took on fiendish shapes. These might have been the enemy leering down on us. The negroes huddled together and said the place was “ju-ju.” Then one night a gun was stolen from the camp-fre circle, right under the sentry’s nose. It was as if a doctor had dis- covered an incurable insidious disease in my body. And the next day the enemy showed himself on the top ridges and bawled insults at us all the way. I did not then know that insults were often the sole offense of African warfare. Suddenly the wady opened out in a crater-like dip that nursed a verdured plain. In the distance were two score sheepskin tents, the largest of which flew the Ilorin flag. Now the enemy swarmed like roaches down the precipices and massed in the ravine. I could go forward, but not back. And I was afraid to go forward, for fear of what I might find. Then my nose was shocked bya pungent stench of rubber. Searching the brush, I found two pots of rubber swung over dead fires. And then, a hundred yards distant, was cigarette evidence of Mr. Marshall’s camp:and ambush. I did not know what to do. I tried to think, but the black, cruel eyes of Haj Ahmed, as I had seen them that day at the gate, pierced my brain and con- fused thought. Then I saw my negroes waiting my orders and looking at me curiously. The poor fellows had learned to lean on Mr. Marshall and in their simple faith they judged all ' whites from his fine example. I caught breath and then rage flamed through me. I pointed to the Emir’s flag and stepped out, the men docilely following. I won- dered that none of the Emir’s men came out to oppose me, or that those in the wady did not assail our rear. 1005 I WAS looking straight ahead, ask- ing myself what I ought to do, when my heart suddenly leaped into my throat, for there, in the open flap of the Emir’s tent, stood Haj Ahmed and Mr. Marshall. Mr. Marshall was smiling at me. I ran forward, my feet obeying an impulse. Mr. Marshall greeted me with, ‘Hello! What brings you here?”’ I stared at him—lI tried to speak—then I pointed back to Mohara and mumbled out the story of the Emir’s intended am- bush and rubber torture. Mr. Marshall looked puzzled at first, then his face cleared and he smiled. “Oh you .’ He was going to say ‘‘simpleton,”’ but checked the word. Instead, he held out his hand and said, ‘‘ You’ve had a bad time of it, old man.”’ He spoke in dialect to the Emir, then linked my arm and led me away to a tent, where he let me down gently. 3 “You don’t size up the negroes’ frivol- ity,” he said, and then, to my unspoken question, ‘‘Oh, yes, he probably meant to have a little sport with these hands of mine—anyway, it was touch-and-go, only I chose my own battlefield and defeated him. Fight the native on a moral battle- field and you win out every time; go to him open-palms, dare and surprise. That’s what I did. While his rufhans were doing funny stunts around the rubber-pots and boasting what they were going to do to the ‘Christian Dog,’ I slipped away from my men through the scrub, passed the Emir’s sentries and popped up before the rascal himself as he sat before a whole-roasted’ sheep. ‘Emir,’ I said, ‘I’ve come to make ivory trade.’ Don’t stare so, boy, remember he is twin brother to Mohara, and twin soul. You wouldn’t balk at tackling Mohara. “‘The Emir nearly choked on a piece of smoking meat, and, before he knew it, had invited me to eat, after which it is religion with a Mohammedan to be on his best behavior to his guest. You must get posted on these little things, old man—they’re worth a whole lot more than machine-guns in getting you out of scrapes. Lord! it has been feasting, and arguments as to whether Allah made the stars before He made the moon, or vice versa, and ivory palaver ever since. To-morrow we start for Igobo with over a thousand pounds of ivory to go in this quarter’s balance-sheets!”’ Comicbook CO