Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 96: what you’re looking at

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

86 inclination to linger and gossip; indeed, she always seemed eager to hurry on her way. He smiled when he spoke to her. She smiled when she replied—in surprizingly good pidgin—and Bruce thought the smile enlivened her handsome, expressionless face most attractively. But it was a wistful, questioning smile, a companion to her gaze; she was, Bruce told himself impatiently, a human question-mark, directed at him. What did she want? What was he ex- pected to do? Bruce was sufficiently piqued by the girl’s manner to wonder and suffi- ciently Joyal to Mazie to avoid any act that would hint, even to himself, that he was unduly interested in the brown girl. He assured himself he was not. But he won- dered why she did not seek him out during his frequent rambles in the uninhabited jungle depths of the island, and tell him what she wanted of him. He knew she sometimes Jeft Stort in drunken sleep and followed him on his soli- tary walks. Billycan and Charley both in- formed him of this fact; and once or twice he had caught a glimpse of her green sarong and a flash of her golden skin in the scrub near by. More than once or twice he felt her presence, had the sense of her eyes upon him, as he traversed the twilight aisles of the thick forest or idled across the grassy meadows on the upland. The espionage was uncanny and got upon his nerves. He would not willingly think of any woman save Mazie—but he could not help thinking a great deal about Marua. HE WAS thinking about Marua now, as he stood before his go-down, 4% staring across the blue water of the bay at Roper’s Jugger. He was wondering where Marua was, and if he should see her that day. For he planned to journey to a little scented arbor he knew of in the deep jungle,.a place where the bower-birds came to dance and make love, and there pass de- lightful hours in a reperusal of the black book under his arm. He wondered if Marua would follow him there. He hoped she would not; he told himself he wanted no woman save Mazie to know that ground. But he rather thought Marua would follow him, because with Stort on spree with the pearler she would have the chance to escape her mas- ter’s eyes. Adventure Bruce suddenly wished he himself had taken his chance to escape the eyes of the bibulous but wakeful Captain Roper. It was too late now. Roper was calling to him and’ beckoning him on board; and Stort hoisted himself on his elbow and mingled his unpleasant, shrill laugh with the mariner’s bellow. “You Sydney burgoo-eater—let’s ’ave a look at you!”’ was Roper’s hail. His words were offensive, but Bruce knew his intention was not. He was offer- ing hospitality. Bruce sighed and moved to- ward the Q-T wharf. As agent, he could not behave churlishly toward “Bully” Roper, for Roper’s trade might come his way some day. He decided he would have one drink, no more, with Stort and the lugger’s cap- tain; then he would plead work to be done, and escape to the scrub and Mazie. Once beneath the awning of the poop and seated upon the diver-bitts, Bruce found himself the object of boisterous and good- natured abuse. “My word, but you re the blurry tofi!” exclaimed Roper. “Here you ’ad me up to your shanty yesterday, and filled me full of good liquor, but you’re too blasted proud to come aboard and ’ave a wet or two with me, out o’ my own stock. That’s not the way, me lad, to treat a white man in this country!” Bruce made his excuse, a good one, that the arrival and dispatch of the Island Queen had prevented his being as friendly as he would have liked during Roper’s visit. “He, friendly?” exclaimed Stort, with drunken frankness. ‘He can’t be friends with the likes of us, Roper. MHe’s too good.” “YT don’t blame him for keeping shy of you,” Roper retorted with equal outspoken- ness. “My word, you make a man creepy! I wouldn’t drink with you—or give you my trade. either—if I didn’t owe the Q-T money! But Bruce will be friends with me —won’t you, lad? Hey, Tuckerbag, hop alonga top-side plenty quick, or you catch him plenty trouble, my word!’ The stentorian threat caused a bushy head to pop out of the cuddy and Tucker- bag, a young Cape York aboriginal, hoisted his lank, sooty body out on deck. Tucker- bag carried a bottle in his hand from which the cork had been freshly extracted; and, obeying Roper’ s gesture, he handed it to a Bruce. COmicloo CN Wp) (©