Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 107: what you’re looking at

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

A Tropic Idyl adders’ poison sacs were emptied; and the rodent’s blood and tissues drenched with the horrible juice of death. It would not take long, he knew. Harassed and infuriated by the stinging ants, the snakes would strike often and blindly at the alien lump of flesh. A half-hour, perhaps; and then the burning, corrupting sun would do the rest. He sat down upon a boulder, well without the range of the valorous. insects, and waited until the last of his Dutch courage had slipped down his throat. He judged the time ripe then. Crossing to the box, which, by this time was, inside and outside, a green, moving carpet of ants, he carefully lifted the cover with the point of the spear. For a moment nothing happened; then one ant-clad adder slowly slid over the edge, and wriggled away into the undergrowth with its living freight. The other two snakes did not appear, and, after a cautious interval, Stort approached ‘closer, with weapon poised. The snakes lay inert upon the bottom of the box, be- neath a surging flood of green; the body of the rat, however, had not an ant upon it; it was as if the insects sensed its uncleanliness. It was incredibly swollen and distorted. Stort impaled the rat upon the spear- point. When he lifted it, a fluid that was neither blood nor water dripped from the wound. Holding the thing as far from him as length of arm and spear-shaft permitted, Stort bore it to the very foot of Carter’s grave, where: the sun blazed all day upon baked ground. Here he left it, with the spear-point still thrust into the sodden flesh, and hurried away home, where something might be had to strengthen his quaking heart and jumping nerves. All the rest of the day Stort passed in his house. He drank steadily, only breaking off to go out on his porch and hur! threats and imprecations at the indifferent house across the way. He did not—indeed, he could not—grow drunken. Though his brain was afire, he was past the stage when he might roll and stagger in his cups. He was hag-ridden by his hateful purpose, and each hour that passed and each glass that was emptied into his purple mouth but strengthened it. When it was nearly sunset he stole out and again ascended the slope to the ceme- tery. There was a rank and poisonous odor over Carter’s grave, and the sun and 7 pea 97 the hours had made of the rat a shapeicss chunk of rotting meat. So evil was the mess in which the spear-point rested that a baneful bluish light hovered over it. With care Stort withdrew the spear and held its point to the sun. A glance, and he whooped with joy and called upon Carter to arise and behold. For the spear-point was thinly covered with a brown, gummy sub- stance which glistened like amber in the sunlight. It was the death adder’s death disclosed to view. — Stort held the deadly weapon over the grave. Down in the ground he could hear his crony’s growling laugh. He laughed in reply, a shrill, insane cackle. “T’ll give him best!” he vowed. VI | BRUCE should have been asleep these many hours. He knew this of his own body, for a great weariness weighed upon him. He knew it of his ears, for Roper told him bluntly— “If you don’t snooze, them fever bugs will start scoffing you again!” His eyes told him, also, for Marua, in endless pantomime, counseled sleep. But he could not get to sleep, and it was Marua’s presence, and the constant thought of her, that kept him wakeful. If only she would go! Then he might sleep. He was torn between panic and pity; and his weakened body was no fit terrain for strong emotions in conflict. He wanted to bid her begone, but he could not. She was his savior. Her strong arm had lifted him up from death. And, as Roper informed him and his senses confirmed, she loved him. She loved him, this bare savage! Her movements, her eyes, her acts, all declared her affection. It was smothering him. She moved about his house with the quiet assurance of one who lived there, who belonged there. She was the woman of the place. She put things in order. She had thrown aside the modest but hampering cloth and went about her housewifery clad only in the nipa-leaf petticoat of her native jungles. It was quite evident she con- sidered herself at home. | She hovered over Bruce like a mother over a sick babe. She held him up while he drank his broth, and the smell of the vege- table oil with which she had _ freshly anointed her bushy head almost caused his COmicloo \ ) C©