Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

88 He knew he was ill-attired for jungle rambling. Always, before, he wore stout, legginged khaki when venturing into the thick forest. Today his covering was the flimsy pajamas, fit dress for the veranda and the beach but ill-suited to the scrub, where a myriad barbs and needles assaulted the passer-by. But to clothe himself for tramping meant a return to his house, and that meant a return to the sight and sound of the drunken revelers on the lugger. He would brave the jungle naked first. His skin was afire; so was his blood; and heated, fantastic thoughts swirled in his mind. He craved the shade and the cold. He felt reckless and light-headed, as if he had drunk wine; Stort was behind him, a disappearing memory, and before him, in the dim, vaulted heart of the jungle, was peace—and Mazie. Hugging the black book to his bosom, Bruce hurried through a grove of giant gum-trees and plunged into one of the narrow, sinuous aisles that pierced through the world of tangled living green. He walked in twilight, upon a black mold that was the jungle’s cemetery and reser- voir of life as well. The sun was shut out of this scrub-land and the daylight, filtering downward through scores upon scores of feet of interlaced foliage, was awesomely and mysteriously dim, as in the vaulted in- terior of a great cathedral. The wind was shut out as well, and the air about him was breathless and steamy and compounded of strange, strong odors. At times the track before him was cov- ered with a light, mephitic mist; it hugged the ground like a scummy film and re- treated as he advanced, beckoning him on- ward like some poisonous will-o’-the-wisp. At times the parasite flowers were so thick about him, and the festoons of their vines hung so low from the trees, that he had to bend nearly double to pass by; and when he did so, the stupefying sweetness of the breath of the pale, bewitching flowers com- mingled with the rank exhalations of the ground to make a draft so strong and nox- ious his lungs refused it, and he crept cough- ing and choking on his way. He pushed on, heedless and unresting, driven by the fantasies of his excited mind. The barbs of swinging vines ripped his gar- ments and raked his flesh. A skirmishing battalion of inch-long soldier ants disputed the path with him. He trampled over them, indifferent to the cruel stings. Such Adventure pain was impotent to arrest him; for al- ready, in his veins, was a deadlier poison than the ants carried, a hotter fire than the smart of a scratched back. As he won the higher ground, the jungle thinned and the daylight became stronger. Even here and there a sun-shaft pierced the green canopy. He began to see birds as well as hear them. He began to taste clean air again. He came to a spring of pure, cold water that gushed out of a cleft rock in the hillside and was immediately soaked up by the spongy. soil; and here he paused and slaked his urgent thirst. This was the spring of the bower-birds, and when he passed over the ridge of the little hill he was in the bower-birds’ grove. It was an oasis of sunshine and clean air in the desert of green, a garden spot, an open forest of graceful trees some two acres in area, and walled in by the dense jungle. Bruce hurried over the springy, flowered turf to the heart of the grove, a little glade ringed and shaded by stately malaleuca and snow-white ‘‘paper-barks” and blossoming hibiscus. Here he lay down upon the ground and rested. He might have been in fairyland, so beau- tiful were his surroundings, so fragrant seemed the smells, after the rank gloom of the jungle. He looked up through the leaves at an immense and fathomless sky. Birds of brilliant plumage darted hither and thither across his range of vision or perched on the branches and peered down at him. A ghost of a sea-breeze fanned his burning cheeks and gave him the scent of the near- by blossom-nectar and the faint breath of sandalwood. It was a drowsy hour; the whispering trees joined with the droning bees to make a lullaby that Bruce found ir- resistible. He had come to this secluded spot to -read the black book, but now he was here he discovered himself incapable of the ef- fort. It was not that he was too wearied; but a lethargy took possession of him,.and with it he experienced a singular feeling of lightness. It was as if his body left the ground and floated on the air. His gaze plumbed deeper into heaven than ever be- fore. His mind was alert and seemed en- dowed with uncanny and erratic insight. He looked for Mazie and found her all about him. His couch was her soft bosom, the tree that shaded him was her stooping form, her eyes were the sky, her breath was oO COmicloo oN Wf) CO