Adventure Magazine, Mid-September 1917 — page 133: what you’re looking at

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

The Hurricane across the floor and looked at the bag scrutinizingly. She touched it lightly with the tip of her tiny finger. Instantly some- thing leaped in the bag, violently twisting itself over and over. Kalputa’s eyes rounded with horror, and she sucked her lips against her teeth. She dragged herself back to the wall. With her face pressed in her thin arms, she lay on the floor, sobbing piteously and shivering in every limb, like a fallen palm- leaf. She knew now that she was doomed— that, try as hard as she might, she could not run away from the “touch of death” in the bag as she had from Captain Barker. For the bag was a sorcerer’s, and there was in the village but one person to whom it belonged. Kalputa wished that she had hidden in the canefields or among the mangrove trees on the edge of the swamp until night. Then she could have crept down to the jetty and paddled across the lagoon to one of the trading schooners. She knew that she would not have found it difficult to hide among the copra and the bundles of sugar-cane until the schooner reached Suva. Presently she began to wonder if she could run away from the ‘“‘touch of death” in the bag. Maybe she had been wrong in thinking that she could not, she told her- self. The next moment she asked a ques- tion: Why couldn’t some sort of harm befall the “‘touch of death” and the one to whom it belonged? But she remembered with a start that when noon came with its scorching white heat Old Lu the sorcerer carefully hung the charm-bag in the house he was near- est and went to bathe in the tar-black bottomless pool in the forest. She felt that Old Lu would be returning for the bag at any minute. As she crawled to her feet and parted the overhanging thatch on the window, Kal- puta heard the island waken from its mid- day nap. On the edge of the forest a cock- atoo screeched, screeched, screeched. The men, women and little children returning from the bush chattered in a faint chorus. A dog stirring out from shelter somewhere down the village street barked. The leaves in the palm-tree heads rustled dryly. And. -35..: Kalputa héard a sound different from all the others. It made her drop to her hands and knees, afraid and shivering all over. 131 Some one was scuttling up the ladder. The next second Old Lu the sorcerer bolted in through the low door, like a rat. He was a small wiry old man with skin as. brown and tough as leather and all shining with coconut-oil. His mouth was long and deep like a frog’s and his sparse black hair was twisted into a mat on the very top of his head. Except fora scarlet loin-cloth, he wore no clothes. Crushed tightly in one long black-nailed claw was some betel-nut he had brought from the forest. Kalputa, trembling with fear, watched him reach for the charm-bag. He squatted on a mat and opened the bag, tumbling the contents on to the floor. Instantly the ‘“‘touch of death” sprang almost to the ceiling and buried its mouth hungrily in the white breast of the sleeping cockatoo. The bird gave a wild screech and fluttered dizzily in a circle. Then it fell to the floor, breathing through its bill. In another minute it was dead. With white jaws open, the “touch of death” came down among the . quartz crystals, bits of carved wood, lizards’ tails and odd-shaped stones, then leaped again. It was a thick black snake with yellow rings extending half-way up its back. Kalputa screamed. *““Ooo!”’ exclaimed Old Lu the sorcerer, snatching up the reptile and dropping it into the bag. ‘Ooo! Ooo!” He turned his black sparks of eyes and saw Kalputa crouching fearfully beneath the window. He recognized her immedi- ately and broke into an ugly grin. “Kalputa ’ere?’”? he asked in pidgin English, his voice growing loud and brassy. “What Kalputa wantum? Cap’n Barker ’ere?”’ He frowned at her from under his sullen brow and slipped a clawful of betel-nut into his frog-mouth. Kalputa made no answer, but watched - Old Lu spit big mouthfuls of gory juice at a crack in the floor. ‘Then she lowered her eyes to the charm-bag and saw a way of | procuring his help. “Kalputa go Suva fonigne: is she said, as she stared into the face of the sorcerer, rapidly constructing her daring scheme. “Capt’in Barker him have things at Suva. Him ’fraid boat capt’in no come bac’ wi’ things. Him say Kalputa, ‘Kalputa, go Suva tonight. Bling bac’ flenty things.’ Him say things to bling. COmicloo ©