Adventure, August 1917 — page 143: what you’re looking at

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

Rotorua Rex Stevenson’s genius for word painting was an unpleasant gift. The word “jointed” was peculiarly suggestive. | Rotorua lay on his back, puffing and snorting in his sleep with great limbs twitching, much as a hound pursues a quarry in its dreams. As Loudon bent and touched him he opened his eyes that rolled red in the firelight and reared himself erect. “All right,” he grunted as Loudon told him of the rocket. ‘Time we go.” He roused the sleepers and~ marshaled them, telling off the shooters who were to stay with the sergeant while Loudon counted out the stingy supply of cartridges for the defense of the knife-edge. As he went toward the notch another rocket soared, wavered against the brightness of the stars and died. From the valleys came the boom- boom of drums and a spark of flame far down the ridge. Serena and her aunt came toward him carrying rifles. The shot-gun cartridges were nearly gone and Loudon left them and the weapons with Bristol for use at close quarters. Rotorua was haranguing his men in low gutturals—here and there a. spear-head glowed. ‘The fires had not been replenished and even the hardy islanders shivered in the chill. The moon was horning low to the fire- tortured pinnacles. The issue was upon them. Toruki and his followers were al- ready creeping up the trail from Moitapu. Five dollars for a nickel cup of coffee, thought Loudon, as he looked at Serena, warming her hands by the fire. The finger-ends were pinched, her face drawn and white despite the reflection of the crim- son ashes. Butshesmiled upathim. Her aunt stood by clasping a rifle, every line and angle of her spare figure grim and un- compromising. If will were force thought Loudon, she’d scatter Toruki with a “‘scat.” They picked some fruit as they went but the fare was mere vexation. The islanders had girded their loin-cloths tightly about them and went filing silently along the.trail, up and over the curling lip of the bowl into the head of the gouge, barely a depression at its head but deepening rapidly as it sloped to the cliff that marked its junction with the cafion that led to Moitapu. The little force was divided equally into left and right wings and, on Rotorua’s com- I4I mand, separated in the dim light, working down slowly along the brush-covered sides. The king walked with Loudon, the two women and six picked riflemen. More marksmen had been told off to the opposite slope with strict orders not to fire until the king gave the word. “We wait,” he said. ‘‘Bimeby Toruki come along between all. Then we fight plenty quick and hard. Drive him down along part. Only one lele path, rest -all part. Suppose we rush, my word, we make um fall over, we drive um like goat. Me, I talk along Toruki with this’—he patted the steel ax at his naked side—‘‘I make Toruki head split like coconut.”’ There was no smack of boasting in his words. If he could break through to Tor- uki there would be a dead tindalo, thought Loudon. Behind them the peaks were flooded with brilliant yellow and the rent vapors that floated from the crests and surged in the fissures glowed sulfur andsalmon. The sea horizon trembled and radiants of rose, the spokes of the uprolling sun, searched the arch of the sky. The ravine turned gray, the main cafion showed deep blue. Along the bottom of the gouge black specks were crawling upward in little groups that resolved themselves into warriors moving ata jog-trot. The golden light on the peaks spread swiftly downward and the flaming disc of the sun appeared, rapidly mounting and jeweling the sea. A sputter of firing broke out, coming from the crater, the reports echoed sharply by the clifis. The besiegers were running rapidly, flecks of light breaking from their weapons. Rotorua crouched beside Loudon and the two women, his hands gripping his quarter- staff until the knuckles sb-wed blue-gray, his face seamed with hard lines at eyes and lips, his nostrils dilated, watching the ad- vance. Loudon, breathing hard, kept his eyes on a patch bare of scrub and grass that formed the pit of a little amphitheater where the gouge was at its widest. The moment Toruki’s force was well within this space, Rotorua would give the word and the king’s men would swoop upon them from four directions in a desperate sally. Toruki had halted to one side of his advance—they could catch the crisp staccato of his orders. His men closed up and the king’s eyes gleamed. CoOMmiclsoo CO 5}