Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

1040 notch. It seemed as if he couldn't get the flavor of it out of his mind. ‘‘And yet, just see what a fool I was!” he exploded wrathfully. ‘‘There I ordered a great big, fat, juicy, porterhouse steak and when it came in, and just because it was a little bit overdone, I wouldn't eat it! Do you get me?” he asked viciously, with a gesture of disgust over his wastefulness. “TI know perfectly well you won’t believe a word of what I’m saying, but as true as I’m standing here to-day, dying by inches for want of a mere handful of worm-eaten, moldy beans, I walked out of the place and left that steak untouched!” I don’t think we properly appreciated Fleming just at that moment. My recol- lection is that we sat there on the ground shaking our heads and silently weighing the awful, sinful prodigality of a man who wouldn’t eat a piece of steak just because it was burned a little on top. After a time I picked up a machete and went off into the jungle. It didn’t seem to me that I could stay there and listen to Fleming any longer. He had mournfully begun to remember other occasions when he had done similar wanton things and had finally gone back to reviewing his early childhood, starting when he was either four or four and a half and had been put away in a dark closet because he wouldn’t eat his mush.. Fleming must have been well fed in his early years. Certainly by his own accounts of it he had criminally, knowingly and with malice aforethought wasted enough good, honest American food in his younger days to have lasted us all the way from Huanuco to the Ucayali. I never felt the same toward Fleming again— at least, not until we had had a good square meal. As I went off into the undergrowth I could hear him still complaining about the Café Berlin and the Dutchman’s steak. FIGHTING A JAGUAR FOR A RAT I THINK we often do some very remark- able things under the stress of these primal instincts. I know that it was only a few minutes after leaving camp that I as- tonished myself by my strange actions. Coming down to the bank of the stream in the course of my wanderings, I heard a peculiar animal sound, as if something were worrying something else, and, promptly following the sounds, came upon a fair- Adventure sized male jaguar which had just killed an extremely large coypu, or water-rat, at the mouth of its burrow. The jaguar had just sunk its tecth into the victim’s neck prepar- atory to dragging it away when my ap- proach made him drop it and stand over his prey with bared teeth and glaring eyes. Several times since this occurrence I have wondered what my friends back in ‘‘God’s Country” would have thought if they could have seen me at just that moment, sunken-eyed and cadaverous, armed only with a corn-knife, and about to fight a duel with a jaguar over the possession of a rat! But the poor little coypu represented so many things to me just then that I don’t think any plain, ordinary member of the rat family could carry them. Probably it would be necessary to canonize it—like the Jackdaw of Rheims. Right here is where my actions, viewed by the light of saner days, became remark- able. Once upon a time some unknown liar, chuckling over his ingenuity,- put forward the statement that the human eye, backed by the unconquerable human will, could subdue any of the beasts of prey. Perhaps, however, I ought not to call him a liar but only ask him to omit jaguars from the list—hungry jaguars, when interrupted in their feeding. Strengthened by this theory and doing my best to keep my eyes off the nice, fat rat, I fastened a look on the jaguar which ought to have frightened to death any living thing except a theatrical manager’s office-boy. Tor five, long, breathless minutes I looked at that jaguar, and the jaguar, very much puzzled and not a little irritated, looked back at me. Finding at last that the strain was becoming too great, I changed my tactics abruptly and, leaping suddenly into the air, let out an unearthly howl. Much to my relief the animal shrank back, whereupon I at once began an improvised war-dance that would have made an Apache Indian look like a cheap amateur. Up and down I pranced and leaped, howling and singing and swinging the machete and always approaching a little nearer to the jaguar until, with one last discordant screech, I made a desperate rush at him and swung the heavy knife at his head with all my force. Just what I would have done if he had sprung at that moment I don’t know at all, especially as the force of my blow carried me so far CO MICLOOKS CO