Adventure Magazine Cover — page 106: what you’re looking at

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

IOO me any; it was the heat that kept me un- comfortable. You know how it is on those hot nights, the old earth just seems to breath out heat, and you think when the sun comes it'll be a relief. But of course, it’s worse. Nothing happened all night, except now and then the sizp-slap of a native’s feet or the rattling of a carramata passing by. The shacks around us were dark and silent, and it was the same way clear down to the wa- ter-front. Out on the bay we could see the ships’ lights, and the light in Rounce’s win- dow went on burning, and that was all. Martin and I knew the way the Jap would have to take to get to Muller’s house, and just before morning we moved over in that direction and waited on the first corner while the sun came up all white-hot and siz- zling out of the bay. The crooked old streets filled up mighty pronto after that—muchachas and wash- people, haughty, white-collared clerks with mucha grande tan. shoes, women in bright- colored camisas, naked children, and pretty nearly naked cargadores—and say, them last were handsome as statues, with their smooth, gleaming muscles. But all the rest of ’em I’d have swapped for a sack of makin’s, particularly the stand- offish clerks. Their talk was monkey’s gibberish to me this morning, and their thoughts were monkeys’ thoughts, and their whole archipelago seemed a pity *twas ever created, and—I guess I was feel- ing done up. Well, Martin and'I waited and waited, keeping an eye on Rounce’s shack; and at about eight o’clock the Jap came out, and turned up the street as we'd expected. I won’t delay any over our encounter with him, except to remark that he showed signs of considerable excitement when we grabbed him. Sometimes they do, you know. We found a big, fat envelope inside his blouse—the envelope, we knew, because it had just been sealed. Martin pocketed it, and then, after we’d made sure that nothing else was on him that mattered, we turned the Jap over to a big Met policeman who’d appeared in the offing. We gave the police- man a letter to our chief, too, so no time would be lost in placing Muller under arrest. Then we hailed a carramata and started back to get the other man. For, of course, that’s all Rounce was by now—just the Adventure lowest-down party to an infernal treason- ous conspiracy. So I couldn’t see why Martin should look so downhearted and discouraged, as if all his faith in humanity had been busted to pieces before his eyes. If he hadn’t kept those eyes so darn downcast, if he’d lifted ‘em and looked up to where the Pacific Fleet lay at anchor on the bay, it might have consoled him, I thought. The line of ships looked very near in the morning light, with toy men all in white moving about on the decks, and a toy Marine guard gather- ing aft on each one of them for Colors. Away out, the old rock Corregidor guarded the entrance like a sentinel—well, Colors would soon be sounding there, too, while everyone within hearing gave his lit- tle daily pledge of loyalty. And it might be that we’d saved all this from destruction, and Manila too, and thousands of lives. I started to say something like that to Martin, and then I held my tongue. No use ringing in anything military; it would only make him feel worse; for when he and Rounce had made friends, they’d both been part of it. Part of the military, I mean, in the great, big scrap. That was all Martin ever told me, that they’d met in France. Seemed to think ’twas enough. Oh, well, we went on. And I remember, when we got out of the carramata in front of Rounce’s shack, we could hear the bugles on the fleet begin “‘sounding off’’—just the faintest sound. We tiptoed, just about as quietly as we had last night, up the littered walk and the bamboo steps and across the veranda. It wasn’t the window that we went to this time, but the door, and I mind, as I opened it, half-lifting my gun from my pocket. And then I stopped, and I guess my breath stopped too, from amazement. Rounce was there, but he hadn’t heard us. He was standing with his back toward us, facing the window through which Martin and I had done our spying. You’ll remem- ber that window opened upon the bay and the fleet and Corregidor. Well, Colors had begun to sound upon that fleet, and the flags were running up, and—can you guess it? | As if he was back in the uniform he’d dis- graced, Rounce was standing at attention, at a perfect salute. Only he’d added this to the drill manual; in his left hand he held a heavy Army revolver, and he was oO COMG HOO <S ©