Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 109: what you’re looking at

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

A Tropic Idyl Marua nodded an anxious head. “Me no like,” she declared. ‘‘Bad fella, him Stort. Bimeby try and make finish my boss fella.” She leaned over the sleeping youth and spread her arms in a wide, sweeping gesture. It was as if she spread a cover over the inanimate form; a protecting cover of love, designed to turn aside the shafts of ill- fortune. Roper watched her, with his great moon of a face made somber by a frown. He was frankly puzzled. He too “did not like.”’ ‘“T wonder where the nig got it?” he repeated. Then, observing that the girl was really frightened, he added in a lighter voice: “‘It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything. ’E’s balmy drunk, is Stort. I clapped eyes upon ’im just before the sun dipped, streaking it into the bush. Like as not ’e was.crazy enough to give Billycan the drink. Like as not ’e left it out, or dropped ity and the nig nipped it. Doesn’t mean anything.” Marua dissented. “Long time me sit down with that fella,” she reminded Roper. ‘Me know that fella; plenty bad. No give gin. Him like make finish us fella.” “It isn’t like Stort to be careless or free- ’anded of his drink,” admitted Roper. ‘“‘And I dare say ’e would like to give us best —at least, the lad and me. But ’e can’t do anything, ’e can’t ’urt us, while I’m here. I’ve got ’is guns. And when I leave, the lad will be up and about, and able to look after ’imself, and you too. Besides, Stort is giving ’imself best. ’E’ll have D. T’s. in another day or I’m no judge. You'll have to make ’im well, Marua.”’ The girl clicked her teeth. ‘““Make him go finish,” she vowed. Roper laughed. “I bet you would, too,’ he commented. . He held the bottle to the light and scruti- nized the thick white liquor of the “wild dynamite.’? “And a few drops more 0’ this than you gave the lad would ‘make ’im go finish,’ eh, m’lass? ’Ow about it; is there enough o’ thei stuff ’ere to make a fella go finish?” Marua glanced incuriously at the bottle. “Make two, three fella go finish,” she said. Then she dismissed the pearler from her mind, if not from her presence, and squatted down to fan her sleeping lord. 99 Roper placed the bottle upon the table and went out to the veranda. He believed what he had told Marua—Stort was help- less, and nothing could happen to him or the girl or their sleeping charge. But he was sufficiently impressed and disturbéd by Marua’s discovery upon the beach to thrust his revolver into the waist-band of his trousers and to move his hammock from the corner of the veranda to a spot just opposite the door to the interior. Roper was a sailor, and he slept as lightly as a cat. When something heavy thudded against the side of the house, he was awake on the instant. It was late night, and black—and still. He sat up in the ham- mock, the pistol half-drawn, and peered into the darkness. Nothing moved outdoors. A subdued exclamation from the room caused him to jerk his head around and look indoors. The lamp was burning and, in contrast to the night he had tried to pierce, the interior seemed brightly il- lumined. Bruce was sleeping peacefully; Roper could see the even rise and fall of his chest. Marua stood at the bedside in a tense atti- tude, staring at the window over the bed. Roper stared at the window, too. - He saw Stort’s face suddenly framed there, Stort’s leering, maniacal face. Marua screamed, and he himself sheuted hoarsely. Something leaped through the window, something long and brown, like a slender streak of brown light—and as it moved Marua threw herself face down upon the bed, covering the sick man with her body in a movement quick as light itself. Roper had the pistol free by this time, and he fired with snap aim at the face in the window. The face disappeared. Roper dropped lightly to the floor, and rushed indoors. As he approached the bed, he nearly stepped upon the point of a native fishing-spear that lay upon the floor. He did not heed it, but bent over the bed and gently lifted Marua. The girl was t€étri- fied, trembling. She bled from a cut upon the back of her shoulder. “It’s nothing, lass; it’s all over,’’ soothed the pearler. “I got ’im, I know. The cut’s nothing.”’ When he set her upon her feet, her trembling increased. He saw her face, and gulped in his astonishment. The face was contorted, and the pupils of the staring eyes seemed to fill the entire sockets. COmicloo CN Vp) ©