Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

A Tropic Idyl mood seized upon, the perceptible quiver- ing of Bruce’s nostrils over the strange -fumes of the potent liquor as an excuse for an outburst. ; “You needn’t look so squeamish!” ex- claimed Stort. ‘I don’t ask you to eat with her, do I? I wouldn’t eat with her myself— I’m white! But if I want her behind my chair—that’s my affair!” Bruce promptly said he had not thought of interfering with something that was none of his business. | “You stuck up your nose!” grumbled Stort. “I saw you! Oh, I know—you think you’re better than me; you and your morals!”’ : Bruce kept his temper. The other man was drunk, irresponsible. He stopped try- ing to make conversation and, leaning back in his chair, gave himself over to reverie and a dreamy contemplation of the witch- ful tropic evening. He would speak no more. But after a while Stort grew tired of si- lence. He ventured a question himself. “What are vou doing here?’”’ he demanded. ‘You are not the sort Devine sends up here.” Bruce hesitated—and answered. He was compelled to speak. It was an urgent necessity that he talk of a certain person to somebody—to anybody. He was on Moorabal Island, he told Stort, because of a girl. A girl named Mazie, who lived in Paramatta, dewn Sydney side. An altogether wonderful girl, whom he in- tended: to marry. A year on Moorabal meant three hundred pounds, nearly, all clear—just enough to set them going nicely. Devine had promised him a good berth in Sydney if he stayed out the year on the island. Wasn’t the prospect worth the exile? Mazie and security—for a year on the island? @ © SOLTORT sipped his drink and lis- {SF tened and smiled cynically, But he SAYIN was interested. Woman was his favorite topic. When Bruce had quite un- bosomed himself, Stort began to talk. He spoke of women as he knew them. He told tales of the sex—tales born in the boozing- kens of the north coast and retailed on island beaches. It was ugly talk. To Bruce it was profanation, insult, to have such talk follow upon his voicing of Mazie’s name. This time he could not suppress his resentmnet. 83 ‘“‘Shut up!” he cried sharply and suddenly. “My word, you are beastly! If you talked like that in a pub in Sydney, they’d kick you out!” Stort got upon his swaying, rickety legs and replied with incoherent obscenities. His gaunt body shook with passion; his cavernous eyes were aflame with hatred. He reviled Bruce until he was out of breath. Then he hugged his arrack to his breast, and lurched away to his shack. The brown girl arose and silently followed after him. Bruce went to his own hut and sat down to write a letter to Mazie. It was his first letter from Mooraba] te the girl in Para- matta and it would be dispatched weeks later, when the T-T steamer called at the island for trade. He wrote according to agreement with the girl, in a large, black- covered journal—of which he had a score in his luggage—for the lovers had decided that their daily letters be diaries, to be exchanged as opportunity offered. He wrote with untruthful cheerfulness, saying Moorabal was a nice place. He wrote no word of Stort or Marua; the names, he felt, would soil the pages for his Mazie’s eyes. He concluded veraciously with the complaint that he was lonely, lonely! Yet when he was finished he did not feel so lonely. His outpouring had cleansed him of his rancor and disappointment. He forgot Stort. He went outside and searched the brilliant night sky until he located, above the horizon, the blazing Southern Cross. This, too, was according to agree- ment. Mazie had thought of it the last eve- ning they were together; Bruce, half- ashamed and wholly delighted with the fond sentiment of the proposal, gave consent. While they were separated, decreed Mazie, each would, before bedtime, contemplate the Crux and think of the other to the ex- clusion of all things in the world. Bruce stood in the doorway and there was nothing before him but the stars and Mazie. For a moment he seemed to achieve the communion. The scented air filled his lungs and was wine in his veins; the world played‘ music to his mood—the gentle, dreamy stir and swish of foliage, the bass grumble of the distant sea-surf, the soft purr of the waters of the bay as they lapped the beach—all these combined in wonderful_ rhythm and harmony. His Mazie was dis- tant uncounted leagues, but never before had Bruce, the lover, felt so near to her. COmiclboo CN Vp) C©