Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

84 Abruptly upon his enchanted senses fell Stort’s voice, coming from Stort’s hut in an angry, drunken scream. The first harsh note dissolved the spell. Bruce restrained an angry oath and turned to go indoors. He heard Marua’s voice in pained and pleading cries. The uproar ceased as sud- denly as it had started. Bruce stood staring at the light in Stort’s window for some time. Then he shrugged his shoulders and tried to slough the inci- dent from his memory. He was for star- gazing again. But it was impossible to regain the pedes- tal. His feet remained upon the ground, his mind could not shut out the hut across the way. Finally he gave up the attempt, and went inside, shutting the door behind him with quite unnecessary violence. Nei- ther did this act shut out the thought of Stort. “The beastly rotter!’’ he growled. was beating her!” ‘““He II a ey IT WAS suffocatingly hot in the ents narrow shade of the go-down. The awe heat radiating from the corrugated- iron wall cut through Bruce’s sweat-soaked pajamas and blistered his back. But he did not move to the more endurable heat be- neath a shade tree. He was hardly con- scious of the discomfort, for his attention was centered upon a black smoke-smudge that trailed above the distant rim of the sea. It was the final good-by of the Island Queen, the little T-T steamer, bound down ‘the coast to other trading-stations and to Sydney. Yesterday the Island Queen had entered the bay, tied up to the rickety wharf and gutted his store-house of its copra and shell and trepang. At dawn, this morn- ing, she had sailed, bidding farewell to lonely Moorabal with much derisive hoot- ing of her whistle. The lazy wisp of smoke at which Bruce gazed was the last visible connecting-link between him and the outside world; and even as he gazed, it dissipated. Not for three months would another steamer call at Moorabal and bring him written word from Mazie. The Island Queen had brought him word. He had the word with him at the moment, in the shape of a black-backed journal—in all respects save its contents similar to the Adventure one he had dispatched south—which he hugged beneath his arm. Nearly all of last night Bruce had sat up, reading Mazie’s letters and dreaming; today he expected to re-read and re-dream. Indeed, he was dreaming now, and the heat and sight and smell of Moorabal were shut away from him. He was dreaming that the great day of his release had ar- rived and he was sailing south on the Island Queen. Almost was the sound of Moorabal shut out of his mind. There were certain sounds of Moorabal he could not shut out. They persisted in his consciousness, and spoiled the architec- ture of his air castles. All last night these sounds had disturbed and incensed him; this morning they still broke against his ears and muddied his thoughts. They were the sounds of revelry, raucous and alcoholic, a discordant medley of hooting laughs, ob- scene shouts and bawled ditties. For the Island Queen had also brought Stort a mes- sage from the outer world—a case of whisky; and in company with his thirsty, flabby friend of the lugger, he was on spree. The pair were, at the moment, on board the graceful little pearling-lugger, which was moored at the Q-T go-down but a short dis- tance from his own wharf. Bruce could see them sprawled on the after deck, beneath the awning, with a native boy administer- ing to their thirst. Stort was stretched full length upon the deck, a gaunt, corpse-like figure, but Roper sat with his back against the sky-light, his gross body seeming to crowd the tiny poop—and each proved the flery life within him by howling, in wretched key and out of unison, the music-hall ditty the boatswain of the Jsland Queen had last night sung for them. Bruce searched the deck for sight of Marua, but the girl was not there; and he would have been surprized had she been, for his two months’ residence on Moorabal had informed him of Stort’s jealous regard for the brown girl. When white men of the pearling fraternity came to visit the island, Marua, as Charley, the beach-comber phrased it, “went sit down along o’ gins” in the native village, or else kept secluded within her own hut. Bruce’s relations with his brother trader had not improved with the passage of time. He could not bring himself to be friends with Stort, even though the latter, in his more lucid and arid moments, was pitifully COmicloo CN Vp) CO