Adventure Magazine, December 10, 1924 — page 169: what you’re looking at

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

The Pirates of Andrus Island bossed them—heavy, dull, truculent and exuding trouble. They always clanged a warning that they cared nothing for the green and lazy beauty of Andrus Island or its natives. The bells bespoke perfectly the characters of their owners—heavy hands and merciless hearts that reeked of greed and made their own laws as they went along. But this bell was different; it told of some- thing behind it that should be feared greatly or feared not at all. He knew the charac- ters of ships’ bells well enough, for he had been on Andrus seventeen months. In that time he had acquired all the cun- ning caution of a jungle beast. And he had abandoned the garments of civilization and had taken every precaution against being recognized from a distance as a white man. The clothes he wore when he first arrived were hidden in a rocky crypt, and he kept them sunned to avoid mold and the ravages of insects. He wanted to be ready to get away from Andrus when the opportunity offered. But it was a waiting game that Wade and Doxey, the other man hiding on the island with him, played. Wade’s face was covered with a short brown bristle of beard that grew nearly to his eyes. It served well as a mask. And his skin was burned to that peculiar rusty blackness which the white man acquires when exposed to tropical light over long periods. He wore only a breech-cloth—a length of faded red trade-cotton—tied native style about his loins. His head was wrapped in greenish cloth, turbanwise, for that color merged well into the background of island greenery. If seen at all by a white man, either through a telescope from the deck of a vessel or in a fleeting glimpse along the beach, it would be mistaken for the head- gear of a native. His feet were protected by strips of old leather tied on like sandals with narrow lengths of old canvas. So Wade looked as wild as his environments, and his dark skin fitted him into his sur- roundings so perfectly that he was safe from the few white men who came to Andrus at rare and irregular intervals. Wade dropped the half-dozen drinking- coconuts which he had gathered and moved down the glade toward the big rock. The fullness of his muscles over his lean and tall frame revealed his youth. Though his bearded face and the sun-wrinkles about his than twenty-five. -man who has suffered hardships, yet there 147 eyes made him look older, he was not more He had the look of a was nothing about his expression that indi- cated discontent with his condition of life. It was the sound of the queer ship’s bell that had set him worrying. He climbed the slight rise which closed the end of the glade from seaward. Tak- ing care to get into the heavily leafed bush before looking out over the bay, he moved off to the left so that he could see in the di- rection of the native settlement. It was this part of the bay which he had neglected to study only a few minutes before. He crouched low and pressed the pendent leaves slightly aside to peer out. “There she is!’ he breathed, and shaded his eyes against the sun’s glare while he studied her rig carefully. A WHITE schooner with three masts was resting on the placid water, just at the line of green which marked the shoaling of the bay. She was anchored some five hundred yards off the beach with the native houses which straggled through the palm groves on her beam. The build- ings lay off to his right, and the curve of the bay increased their distance from him to a half a mile by land, and half of that along the line of his sight. “Ah-ha!” he remarked with a cunning light in his eyes and a sudden quivering of his hand which held aside the big leaf. “TI know what she is! That’s ‘Salvation’ Jes- sup in his Gospel Argonaut! That means Parson Jessup and his wife have come to’ sing a few hymns and convert the natives! Sure! Here’s luck!’ All signs of worry vanished from his face. Now he grinned broadly, and a thoughtful look entered his eyes; a crafty look that took on something like hunger for the things which the schooner represented. All at once, by the magic of the trim little schooner, he was yearning for the comforts cf civilization which he pretended to ignore. He saw a figure move along under the awning of the quarterdeck. It was a woman in a white skirt and waist, and on her head a blue sunbonnet. She was walking back and forth, and he watched her for a few minutes. Suddenly she planted her elbows on the roof of the cabin, and holding her hands to her face, turned slowly round in a Comicbook © =