Adventure Magazine Cover — page 82: what you’re looking at

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

72 began to dribble away by twos and threes. The last to stay by the mound were three women—Motobatl’s Mary Magda- lene, Mary and Joanna— And so Bird- song’s mission ended. The promoter watched them go with gray thoughts. Although he had never liked the colporteur; although throughout their adventure together, he had felt the revivalist was a fanatic, following the craziest cosmogony, still, his abrupt taking off left the Stendill agent troubled and shaken and somehow aimless. A breeze sprang up out of the east and cleared away much of the smoke. It stirred lines of silver over the blue water and blurred the reflections of the peaks. The sunshine grew warm. Lassiter got slowly to his feet and walked down the beach toward the great piazza. Lying in front of the im- mense pavement, he saw Nunes’ bolsa with its queer top. It was a discarded little battleship that would never fight for its designer. It still lay half-drawn out on the sand where Quiz-Quiz had pulled it. Little waves broke against its stern with a con- tinual sobbing. The great piazza lay cool in the morning shadows. It was entirely deserted. From the north came a barely heard sucking and choking of the distant whirlpool. Lassiter thought of Birdsong, a gray cadaver, spin- ning round and round and taking a last plunge. Perhaps the body was spinning at this moment, or would soon, or had. The promoter felt profoundly weary, old, burned out. He was turning south, with some vague intention of going back to his paddlewood and lying down, when he saw the bulk of Gogoma push out of the jungle toward the north. The high priest carried a basket on his great arm and Lassiter knew it held birds. The Stendill agent was about to turn on away when the behemoth made a gesture asking him to wait. Lassiter walked over and leaned against one of the vast pilasters. The fat man waddled toward him with his breech clout entirely concealed in rolls of flesh. The blue heron feather fluttered in the breeze. A disgust came over Lassiter at the thought of waiting and talking with the priest so soon after Birdsong’s murder. He was about to go on after all, but a second thought came and told him that it had been Adventure war, that Gogoma was again in power, that he, Lassiter, was doomed to spend the re- mainder of his life on some sort of terms with the murderer— It was simply a ques- tion of policy. After all, the whole of life was a question of policy So Lassiter remained leaning against the pilaster, one foot cocked up against its cylindrical surface which was flat in relation to so tiny an object as a human figure. The fat man came up sweating profusely. He stopped with a slight gesture of saluta- tion. ‘“‘A very pretty morning,” he puffed and gave his head a shake that sent down a little rain. “You have a lot of birds.” “T got them off your limes, sefor. You chose an admirable place.”” He looked up at the rim of the crater high above, “‘I won- der if your message will ever bring help?” Lassiter did not look up. “T don’t know— It doesn’t make much difference.” The behemoth regarded him gravely out of pin-point eyes set in the expanse of brown face. ‘You are thinking of your friend, sefor.” “Certainly.” Gogoma meditated. ‘““Well—it is true. It makes little dif- ference who comes or goes— We are but scum caught in the Web of the Sun—” He — paused a time and finally added— “Still we try to hold our places The promoter stood moving his foot 9) against the surface of the pilaster with a — slight nervousness. The movement made about as much sound as the murmur of the whirlpool to the north. At last the New Yorker asked the question forever nibbling in his mind, “How did you kill Birdsong in the net, Gogoma?” The wide face was unmoved by so much as a quiver. “T did not kill him, sefor.”’ ‘“Your men, then?” “‘They had nothing to do with it, sefor.”’ Lassiter saw the priest meant to reveal nothing of the terrific mechanism of the net. There was no need trying to probe by in- direction, for Lassiter already sensed the behemoth’s mind was subtler than his own. To his surprize the priest proceeded. “Tf Sefior Birdsong had greased his hands and feet he could have walked on the net NOOK (C@