Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

82 In the other’s face gave Bruce a most un- pleasant shock. ‘“‘I—I don’t know,” he stammered. *T think he did,” said Stort. “I know he did. He—he still comes back. When I get very drunk.” Bruce essayed a laugh, but it was a very thin and mirthless laugh. His companion’s mood made him most uncomfortable. ‘‘Just nerves,” he said soothingly. impossible, you know.” “Nerves? Yes, yes; my nerves are all jumpy. I needa drink. Let’s get back!” Stort voiced his need with jerky eager- ness and set out with nervous haste for the houses. Apparently Bruce might follow or not, as pleased him. MT" < HE FOLLOWED at a distance, glad to be alone. He wished, as he watched Stort’s hurrying back, that he had for company on the island almost any other man in the world. Stort im- pressed him most disagreeably; the man was a renegade, a sot, a nervous wreck. Bruce disliked him and pitied him, and de- termined not to see too muchof him. Too much of Stort would turn one’s stomach. Bruce went to his own house. He dis- covered his luggage upon the veranda and a black boy who welcomed him with the stolid announcement— “Me Billycan, belonga boss fella gone walk about; now Billycan sit down alonga ou.” : Bruce nodded assent. Being an Austra- lian, he could comprehend the pidgin. Billycan had informed him he had belonged to the unfortunate Pierce; and that he now wished to belong to Bruce. A T-T retainer.: Bruce told Billycan they would clean house at once and move in. It was a task, Bruce discovered, not with- out excitement of a sort, and that sort not altogether pleasant. Many living things were there before him, in the T-T house—a venomous snake, which Billycan dislodged with a stick from its residence behind the burlap which lined the walls; several lizards; ants in legion, and countless little crawly things; a kangaroo rat that lived under the bed. There were remarkably few traces of his predecessor in the room; Bruce concluded that Pierce lived light in the tropics, or else his belongings had been collected and sent away. A number of empty liquor bottles, Adventure some worn pajamas hanging from pegs, and the musty, moldy bed; these were all that remained of Pierce. Bruce presented the clothes to Billycan, to that worthy’s almost hysterical delight, ordered the doubtful bedding out of the house—a family of scorpions was evicted at the same time—and threw the bottles out of the window. ‘They fell without breaking upon the soft ground and formed an irregular semi-circle about the window. Then, when Billycan had swept the floor with a palm-leaf broom, Bruce moved his luggage indoors and was settled. The eve- ning shadows lengthened, Billycan disap- peared, and suddenly Bruce’s labors were interrupted by the soft voice of Charley, the beach-comber. ‘““Come tucker now, boss!”’ It_ was a welcome summons, for he was hungry. He followed Charley’s twisted body across the glade to the arbor without delay. Stort was at table ahead of him and greeted his advent with a surly nod. Stort, it was evident, had been industriously for- tifying his shaken nerves with liquid cour- age—he slumped drunkenly in his chair, and beside his plate was a squat, square- faced bottle of Batavia arrack. Behind his chair Marua sat upon the ground. Bruce sat down to eat in a spirit of an- tagonism toward his brother trader. The man, he thought, was a shameless rotter. It was bad enough to know that a white man had a brown woman in his house; but to have this shame frankly visible at meals was quite disgusting. Most disgusting of all was Stort’s attitude toward Marua. He flaunted her in Bruce’s face, in his glances he gloated over her—yet she was not good enough to sit beside him and must squat at his heels like a dog. Bruce ate his meal, heartily detesting his table-mate. The supper was well cooked and savory and Bruce’s appetite was edged by youth ‘and health and exertion. His enjoyment of the viands was marred only by the sickly- sour smell of the arrack. He tried to ignore the fumes. He wanted to be friends with Stort, even if he could not feel friendly toward him. He endeavored to chat and plied the older man with questions about the island. Stort declined to chat and gave short and surly answers to the questions. Stort was feeling his nerve tonic. His quarrelsome COmiclboo oN ) CO