Adventure Magazine Cover — page 150: what you’re looking at

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

148 He spied Yates immediately. A wild glare of ferocity sprang at once into his eyes as he drew his creese and came rushing forth. “Die, accursed Nazarene!’’ he screamed. “Thou who hast done this thing with thy devil’s water cans!” He broke through the crowd that would restrain him. Yates held up the raja’s bracelet. “Have a care, Ya Israng!’’ he warned. The old man recoiled from it as from a cobra. He would die a lingering death on the pointed bamboo stake if he affronted that charm! “Come!” said Yates persuasively. ‘‘A life for a life, Ya Israng. I have called thee the grandson of a flea and the offspring of a toad and have threatened thee with beat- ings, but—I shall but touch thy baby and he lives. What sayest thou?” “Tf the heaven-born will but deign! And quickly!” gasped Ya Israng, suddenly collapsing into the humble and submissive native in his extremity. ‘“The magic that I have seen!” Yates snatched the baby from Mat Panku’s none too gentle ministrations. In a single press the needle went home into the fat little thigh, and there was a sudden convulsive stiffening of all his limbs, a choking cough, a retching, and then a lusty yell, howl upon howl of outraged infancy. Ya Israng’s son had at last come into his world, shouting his displeasure at the top of his lungs! Yates handed down the squalling infant to Ya Israng, who now clasped the heaven- born’s puttees and was mumbling incoherent blessings. ~ “T)o thou whisper the name of Allah into his ear, Old Wise One,” he said, ‘‘and let there be no more of anger between 2 “Aye, tunku!l Allah is my witness that a Adventure life cancels a life—and he that gives his word shall keep it like a fort,” mumbled Ya Israng gratefully. “God is good,” said Yates shortly. ‘Thou and I, Mat Panku, are needed back at the balez, for there is yet more magic to perform and many lives to save.”’ On the way back Yates launched the master stroke that broke the back of the cholera at Kwala Luwas. “There is a spring down the road from the residency, O Mat Panku,” he told the head pawang. “Harken thou carefully unto me concerning this spring. Thou wilt take a dried frog, sewn up in a bag made of the pelt of an unborn tiger cub—hearest thou?” he directed earnestly. “T hear, O hadjil” said Mat Panku, trembling, for this was very great magic and bard to obtain. “It is well! This wilt thou put in that spring, so that its waters become magic waters. Then thou wilt tell the raja to command that no man may drink, save from the waters of that spring. Thus will the plague be charmed away.” “Tt shall be done, O Great One,” said Mat Panku earnestly. pesca THAT and the salt pump. Three eee days later Yates returned to the ~ anxious Ranleigh, to find Browne and Crabbe well on the road to recovery. “You'll find ’em gentled and loyal, all right, I guess,” he told Browne casually. “You just missed a fat little revolution! I’ve got ’em drinking good water, and that ought to finish the cholera. Only, if Crabbe finds any queer things in the spring, he’s on no account to throw ’em out,” he laughed. “‘Rather not!” purred Browne. He, too, was making a beginning at un- derstanding the silent, sullen peoples over whom he ruled. Go DOO = A C©