Adventure Magazine Cover — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

36 to the complaisance of the Vieux Carré. He picked up his fiddle and, seated on a box inside the shed, started on his first job in New Orleans, speeding up West Indian negroes with the tramping measures of Nova Scotia. The sun dropped into the haze across the river; the water was woven with streaks of burning copper; the sultry day was giving way to the night, a night of stars with an air of gardens, the breathings of bayous, the musty odors of old palaces, old churches, ghostly evocations of a romantic past. But.in that.shed Donald had to endure the reek of the stacked bananas and the sweating, shuffling negroes. They trotted in and out of the sunset, shouting, singing to his music, with the big crates of fruit pouring from their shoulders till they re- minded him of some primeval, aboriginal rite performed in the dark forests their fore- bears had come from, He remembered the slave mart under the old Hotel St. Louis, the square that used to be given over to the slaves for their unhallowed rites—Congo Square. He grew hot, tired, and his arm sagged a little; his tempo grew slower; his interpo- lated breakdowns gradually gave way to long-drawn notes and languid intervals. He scooped his passages to a drawl; he glis- saded his scales; his fiddle no longer stormed, screamed, laughed and lifted; it was sleepily droning the opiate music of muddy rivers, long, hot noons and degenerating men. “Ye’re a fiddler, me lad,’’ remarked the mate, ‘‘but the Judiques I knew could keep it up till daylight with fights outside be- tween the tunes. But we’re unloaded, thanks to ye.” “Shore leave, men, for one hour,” he shouted to his crew. ‘The old man will be down any moment. And remember you’re in a town where you ain’t British or French ‘or Dane, just nigs. Don’t hog the side- walk; don’t look-at white women.”’ Suddenly a scream, shriller than a har- monic from Donald’s fiddle, arose out of that mass of wet ebony faces. The mob parted; one of them was lifting a bare foot, his face the color of old ashes. In the center of the circle of their evading feet squatted an enormous, hairy, black spider. ‘Did he bite yer?” demanded the mate, examining the man’s foot. ‘Not a sign. Stow yer squealing. Tarantulas often come among the fruit. Nasty things.” Adventure Donald was bending over the spider; the mate lifted his boot to crush it. “Wait a bit,” said Donald. “Let me look at him. I never saw such a big fellow. You see, the music brought him out of the bananas.” ‘““‘What’s that?” asked the mate, and some of the crew paused in the door, awaiting the death of what had so frightened them. “Yes,” said Donald. ‘I’ve often seen money spinners drop from the ceiling when. I’ve been playing. A fellow in the orches- tra of our show used to take his tuning fork into the woods and get the spiders out of the bark by striking it and holding it against the trees. They like music same as we do.” “Maybe. But these ain’t money spin- ners. These are pizen.”’ The mate’s heel crushed down on the hor- ror, and he then led Donald out of the shed to go on board. The crew, hurrying for their shore clothes; parted to let them go by. They seemed to be shrinking from the man who had been'so friendly to tarantu- las. ten almost fell from the gang plank. ‘“‘What’s eating themr” asked the mate, as they passed forward to the forecastle, not men happy with shore leave, but silent, almost clmging to.each other, jamming each other in the rush-to the door. A low chuckle came out of the dusk from a man standing by the gangway to the en- gine room. It was the engineer, blacker than most of the crew, grimed with oil, coal and rust. ‘This gentleman should not have ad- mitted his instrument attracted that spi- dah,” he said. The negro spoke with a Bond Street ac- cent and a grandiloquence and poise that could patronize Bond Street. “Those chaps are superstitious, Mr. Tavish. They conclude this gentleman is a witch doctor. You are probably aware of voodoo, Mr. Tavish.”’ ‘“‘Rot,” said the mate. ‘You have been long enough in the Is- lands, Mr. Tavish, to know that my con- clusion is sound. It was not particularly bally good judgment, Mr. Tavish, to bring this gentleman on board. Especially with his violin. It may hoodoo this ship. The men may desert.” “I say rot, Parkes. erly you don’t be- lieve in that humbug?” MICLOOOK Vibration brings them out. The man who thought he had been bit- C@ in