Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

1044 passed me by this time and I remember how I measured this one’s approach. ‘‘He is the last,’ I said to myself. ‘In another minute he will be up with me—in five min- utes more he will be beyond the sound of my voice. He is the last.” I think I realized all that this would mean, but, curiously enough, where a sort of terror should have nerved me to get up and stagger on a few yards farther, all I remember feeling was a great self-pity for a poor devil named Huffman who, without soles for his shoes or trousers for his legs, was dying by inches in a South American jungle because no one would give him any- thing to eat. It was about this time that the last cholo came up to me. Nearly opposite where I was lying he stopped and, with a dull but not inimical look out.of his glassy eyes at the man who had been oppressing him for the past month, began to hunt in his pouch for coca-leaves. Finding some, he was raising them to his mouth when something suddenly induced me to stretch out my hand. With a faint smile parting his lips he gave me the leaves. Then he felt in the pouch again, looked at me wanly for a mo- ment, grunted out an ‘‘Adios” and was gone. They had been his last leaves. And now I wish to state without exag- geration one of the most wonderful things. I have ever heard of. live minutes after the cholo had gone by I was on my feet! Five minutes after that I had not only caught up with him but I had passed him! And I kept on going, gaining on one after another of the party and finally coming up with the four Americans in the van. I remember calling out to them in my enthusiasm while I was still in their rear and pleading with them to do as I had done. I owe my life to coca, and I am prepared to state without fear of con- tradiction that its like does not exist on the face of the earth. If you are ever starv- Adventure ing to death where it grows, try coca- leaves. If you are not starving, however, it is far better left alone. AKA OCTOBER twentieth brought us to the summit of the range, as I =“ have said, but we were so weak and emaciated that, after gaining the top, we could do no more than lie prone on the. ground and stare out over the country be- low us. Immediately in our front lay an enormous stretch of pampa extending as far as the eye could reach in a gently hilled, heavily forested bed of green. Far in the distance a thin, gray ribbon, seen at inter- vals between what seemed lke slight un- dulations but were in reality fair-sized hills, convinced us that we were looking at the Ucayali, many miles away, of course, but nevertheless representing that goal for. which we strove. It all looked very beautiful that morning, so peaceful and rich in color and so still, and yet in those silent forests there below our greatest danger waited for us, a fact which I think every man in the party real- ized to the fullest extent. When I ponder over this part of our journey I sometimes marvel at our temerity. For a party of twenty-one men, heavily armed, well guided and well supplied with food and ammuni- tion to traverse a densely wooded cannibal country would have been a serious matter under the most favorable circumstances, but when it is remembered that there were only a dozen guns among us and that we were almost too weak to carry even those, to say nothing of using them, I wonder that we ever attempted it. But anything, even death by an Indian arrow or blow-gun, seemed preferable to a continuance of our ° tortures. A thousand pairs of eyes might have been watching us as we rested up there on the range, but in view of the food which we would certainly obtain once we reached the pampa, our indifference was complete. (The fate of Mr. Huffman’s expedition will be told in Adventure for November.) fa —_ ab comicboooks CO 5}