Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 83: what you’re looking at

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

The Crowing Hens of Totulu Boyle alone on the island. This isn’t a pleasant remedy and you’ve got to help me apply it. Besides, when things shape as I think they will, ’ll want you to send word. We're going to Uafotu atoll. It’s scant seven miles due southwest. But you’re not to know where we’ve gone.” ““Hi’m hon,” replied Jimmy. “But Hi don’t see w’y Hi should be picked hout.” “ll make it right with you.” “Hany hanswer to the note?” Captain Boyle considered. *“‘No. I guess not. Let it work itself out. Send Hardin to me and help round up the men.” A little after midnight, the moon sunk, the starset lagoon ruffled by the last of the ebb, the Margaret Ann, lightless, slipped her cable, and, under headsails and mizzen, two ‘ whaleboats ahead to help steerage in the scant breeze; sneaked away from the un- suspecting village where the women, braced anew by the arguments of Mrs. Boyle against desertion at the first issue, slept after the turmoil of the day. Clear of the reef, the boats were called in, sail made and yards braced, and the barken- tine was wafted silently on the light wind toward Uafotu, leaving the atoll manless, save for Jimmy—whose martyrdom held it’s ministering angel in Fuatina, the only unconverted fahine on Totulu. a) IT WAS the third day of the reign of women on Totulu. The banner still flaunted it’s solgan between the flagpoles, the ensign of Margaret Ann, reg- nant; and that lady still maintained a dominance that was, however, beginning to show signs of internal dissension. Fuatina supplied Jimmy with a service of verbal bulletins. “Pirikia plenty soon I think,” she re- ported. ‘Coconuts all gone and only young fahine can climb um tree. Young fahine mad along huapala (sw2etheart) all gone. Fahine not very good catch um fish. No musika, no hula. Plenty pirikia.” It was even so. Mrs. Boyle was up against it. She was fighting primeval in- stinct that her own veneer of civilization prevented her from understanding. In the South Seas—and elsewhere—such instinct is divided into two parts, Sex and Stomach. Stomach had already set up it’s complaint and Sex was realizing it’s lack. F The twenty odd queens, having but one SI man between them, remained fairly loyal to the new principles. But there were ba- bies in Totulu who wanted their daddies, wives who craved their husbands and pro- viders. There were disconsolate sweet- hearts. There were younger maidens who were still angling in the delightful waters of flirtation where many fish swam and there were grand prizes for the lucky and skilful. Kokua no longer played ravishing tunes on the noise-box and Kimo wouldn’t, or couldn’t—being as a man, anathema in the eyes of their leader. There was therefore no mere singing, or dancing, or swimming in the lagoon with lusty male partners while the noise-box furgled and clanged and hooted more or less melodiously. There were no more laughing exploits on the reefi— with the same male comrades—with torches to spear for pool-fish when the nights were too warm and far too fair for sleeping. The first row started over the lack of cocenuts. Water was comparatively scarce on the atoll and seldom used for drinking— not to be compared with the milky, bubbling juice of young nuts, gathered at dawn and kept cool beneath banana leaves. The younger women, peeved at the lack of love- making facilities, balked at furnishing the supply for the whole crowd and climbed only for themselves. The maturer women with children, began to draw apart in groups. This fahine papalangt, they learned, had no children. ‘‘What was she to advise the mothers of men-babes?” The elders, who preferred gin and beer to coconuts, and sometimes got them when a ship was in the lagoon and their men were kind, grumbled among themselves. Mrs. Boyle noted the symptoms ef de- fection, but she could not prescribe for them. She was conscious of growing a little tired herself of her most faithful satellites, the queens. Curiosity, she realized had been the chief link between them, and that was getting rusty. She wondered where the barkentine was, and fought a _ constant temptation to question Jimmy, whom she had herself placed beyond the pale. Sex and Stomach began to assert them- selves in her, also. The captain was far oftener in her thoughts than he had been for many a month, and she remembered all sorts of good qualities he possessed that long custom had dusted with non-appre- ciation. She craved the delicacies set on the shelves of the Margaret Ann’s pantry CoOMmichoooks CO