Adventure Magazine, December 10, 1924 — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

16 “Dunno, but I got a idee that that there dumb bloke got their numbers all right, all right. Did yer know the herrin’-gutted bloke long?” “No; but he was a great pal of my brother, who disappeared years ago in China.”’ “OQo-er! Disappeared, did he? Was this duck with him?” “N-no. I don’t think so. Darned if I know! Ah!” They turned at a shout from Bodiker, “Hey, Tony! We’re sports too! We're coming! Wait!” ‘‘See!”? commented Plessons. ‘‘Pa’s little wonder’s scared stiff we’ll run orf with the marbles, bless his tender little heart!”’ Plessons was right. Evidently greed had overcome fear. Presently the pair joined them, panting in their hurry. “Ts it far?’ demanded Bodiker. “Jus’ abaht as far as the cow fahnd it when she jumped over the moon,” re- sponded Plessons. Bodiker didn’t reply. AS THEY toiled on in the keen air m| suddenly a question born of the wal} interesting conversation overheard, flashed into Tony’s mind. Had that hypo- dermic syringe been charged with quinine The fellow had been very sick, but it was certainly strange that quinin should kill him instantly. The shot might, as Bodiker had suggested, have been coincident with the death agony, but—! And it was the same syringe that had been prepared for the dying white man whom Bodiker had been so queerly concerned would not die. Tony recalled the persistent, anxious questions as to whether the old man had Spoken and what he had said; and again the startled cry when the sick man had seen Bodiker. Was there any connection between the two facts? Had Bodiker afterward deliberately put the syringe in Tony’s case hoping—if it were a polson— that he would have occasion to use it? Presently the milk of the moon began faintly to wash the eastern stars; and a little later Plessons, breaking trail, stopped and, pointing, said: “There y’are, lidies and genelmen, the only o-riginal and u-nique African circus hactually used by the hancient emp’rers for their gladia-tors in their scraps with the yeller ’ounds, w’ite-livered curs and other fer-ocious animiles! No hextra charge Adventure lidies and genelmen! Pass along!” Whether the said gentlemen so playfully referred to failed to hear or whether they were too intoxicated with the wild beauty will never be known. A moon with the slightest of flattened cheeks was seemingly perched on the crater edge of a volcano some ten miles away, sketching the masses of the raw summit and the slope in liquid, pallid blue and tinting a sister mountain top and the lower hills that spread out fanwise beneath like two trains of courtiers in gauze splashes of silver. Opposite was a group of five other vol- canoes, ultramarine against the stars, lumped higgledy-piggledy as if carelessly thrown up to stop the western gap of the two low ranges of hills which roughly formed a vast arena. The first things that caught the eye away down to the east in the vast depths of the gloom were faint yellow spots like a bunch of stationary fireflies. As the flood of the moon rose they saw that the mass of tumbled boulders about them ended abruptly a few feet in front and that a steep escarpment shot down at an angle of about 80 degrees into the as yet shadow-veiled valley. A little farther to the west the slope of the hillside, which for some geological reason had resisted the tremendous upheaval, jutted out, descend- ing gradually, suggesting an easy way down until the rising moonlight showed that the end appeared as if it had been bitten off. Like rocks left by a receding tide in a black sea were jungle-covered islets, the original masses of rock and earth as they had fallen during the volcanic convulsion. ‘“‘Where’s them di’monds?”’ broke in Saw- yer’s husky tones. ‘“Dahn below,” explained Plessons. ‘Yer see, we have ter cut some of them bamboos to maike fishin’ rods, and then yer bait ’em with a bit of bluff and then we pore blokes dive dahn and hook on the di’monds while yer two pull ’em up, see? Easy ain’t it?” Sawyer’s face in the moonlight looked like an angry gargoyle. ‘“‘See here, yer —— limejuicer, if yer try any more o’ that——”’ “Oh, shut up, Phil!’ said Bodiker, hero- ically interposing his thin body. ‘‘Remem- ber what you promised,” he whispered, and Sawyer’s dire threats ended in a growl. Pass along, please! CoOMmicboolk Wh) CO 5}