Adventure Magazine Cover — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

) THE dark blur of Nunes’ bolsa @@ still lay at the foot of the piazza; sia? as Lassiter approached it, he heard a scraping and presently saw a movement in the mass of the boat. As he came closer, he saw it was a man bailing out the boat with an oar. The promoter walked on past the sirended bolsa into the water when Nunes’ voice called, “Is it you, sefior?”’ The promoter answered and paused at the depth of his knees. “Mio Diost gasped the Cclombian. “And you escaped the spider! You escaped —I heard shuts 2 The promocer agreed wearily. “You see I’m out.” And ne waded on into the river. There was a pause; the niuleteer came to the edge of the water an peered after the vanishing man. He cleared his throat, then called with a certain politeness through the rain. “Tf you will wait a moment, sefor, I am going your way. We kave been camarados all the way through, sefior—”’ The pro- moter peered at him through the gloom. “Do you mean : “Sz, sefor, and the whirlpool will be more dashing than still water, more fitting for caballeros 2 “Tt’s all the same, Nunes.” “But—but,- sefior,” pleaded the mule- teer in a queer voice, “I hate going down alone—I hate it— I was standing here thinking— I will tell you “I meant to take the girl down with me in this bolsa. Ah, Sefior Lassiter, that would have been a death! To be sucked down the whirlpool in her arms. Madre de Dios What a death for a caballerol Kissing her scarlet lips, pressing her soft body! What a death!” . He broke off shuddering in the drizzle. Lassiter watched his frustration with de- tached eyes. Suddenly the Colombian broke out in a sort of rage. : “Mother of God! You Norte Americanos feel nothing! You are stones! I loved the girl! She hated me just enough to be fire— flame! May the fiends : He shook his oar at the dripping skies, flung it into the bolsa, seized the prow and heaved at the clumsy vessel. It grated a few inches on the sand. The muleteer heaved again, damning himself, the world, the girl; as he damned, he worked the do/sa into the river. When Adventure it floated he left off his cursing with his push- ing and swung up on its gunwale. As he floated past Lassiter he reached down a hand. ‘“‘Come on, camarado,” he said in the dull backwash of his violence. ‘Let us perish like caballeros in the maelstrom; not drown like pigs ina pool—” Ashe heaved the pro- moter aboard, he panted between heaves— “It is true—I meant to murder you—on your bridal couch, Don Carlos—and seize your bride—but not as an enemigo—not so, mt anugo—but as one dear friend—who murders—for the woman they love——”’ Lassiter got himself into the stern of the bolsa. ‘The smallness, the triviality of the Colombian’s lust, this final melodramatic gesture, this assertion of his entity—how pigmy-ish it stood against the impersonal drizzle of the skies, the rising wail of the maelstrom and the vast blankness of death. The Colombian pulled down the cover of his bolsa which he had designed to protect him and Tilita for a little space. It shut out the rain and the gray night. Then Lassiter heard him crawling along the sides adjusting some sort of fastenings. The promoter shifted his seat on the reed bottom until he had gained some sort of repose. The little nerves of his body de- manded their due attention on the eve of extinction. They were like tiny burghers functioning, unconscious and unalarmed while a tornado rushed upon their dwelling. Presently the Colombian said quietly: “T watched you when you left her in the paddlewood, Don Carlos. I went in at once and waked. her and yet—I let her be— there was something so terrible in her eyes —I could not do it. You can well imagine my amazement, Don Carlos, when I found that I, Dom Pedro Porforio Balthasar Nunes, a muleteer and a caballero, was really so weak as to hold off my hands, to let her go— Doyou think, sefor, that He—He Who looks down upon us and reads the good and evil of our hearts—do you think that in -a moment He will say to me, ‘My son, Porforio, for this great renunciation you shall have the highest seat in a The dolsa touched a stone and jarred heavily. The coughing and sucking of the whirlpool overcame the muleteer’s voice. The 1 Increasing clamor of the waters brought back with a last despair Lassiter’s days with Tilita at the bird limes. Against the intense darkness, the girl arose before him with the intensity of tropical sunlight, her COMICOOOKS Cc (©