Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 108: what you’re looking at

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

go No fit? Not proper country. Tiny was not able or willing to go on. Roach took the Kroo’s pack, told him not to be afraid, but go back to the village and wait his return. If he was not back in ten sleeps Tiny would know he had “gone abambo,” gone to spiritland, died. He left the Kroo kneeling on the trail, staring after him wistfully. Such determi- nation breke the hearts of the plaguing blacks. They saw it was no good. They sat down on the trail, calling their warnings after him, till he had walked beyond earshot. Not idly had he bidden Tiny wait ten sleeps. He calculated that Kolo had not come far, for it had been midnight when the village tom-tom reported the palaver and Bilibib’s careless admission of an overlord. Say, then, Kolo had walked six hours. He, Roach, ought to make N’gibbidi by midnight—but he did not. Fever was an old story with him, and by that reason he should have heeded the warning burn in his bones while he was still in the village. He could not have reached N’gibbidi that night, for he afterward recollected lying out under a broiling sun and crawling with tongue out toward a body of water that existed only in the hallucinations of thirst or else in mirage. He had a vague memory of going on and on under a skyful of stars— of stumbling along, a figure in a dream, an embodied soul dragging through a vast solitude of fantastic cacti and conical ant- hills. He must have made it the second night, or he would have perished of thirst. He gravitated like an automaton, the pack growing heavier and heavier, but never a thought entered his head to discard it, never a thought of giving up. An automa- ton with one controlling idea—if an auto- ‘maton can be said to have an idea. At last he sighted, or thought he sighted, a wide spreading town on a rise. A real town of house-lined streets; houses of clay with flat roofs. Anyway, he found himself trying to enter a town. He could not see it, yet was so close to it that he heard the bleatings of tethered goats. For some strange reason he could not get into the town. ‘Though he kept going, the bleatings of the goats still remained close, yet far. The trail went in and out between abominable walls that tore his clothes and scratched his hands. Walls so close-that he Adventure was ever brushing against them. It seemed to him that he traversed miles and miles between the walls, the bleating goats al- ways just on the other side. Often he sat down to rest, to try to think, but as often fever overcame him and he lost track of everything. He heard cocks crowing the coming dawn. Presently a gray light revealed the walls to be growing thorny cacti. He struggled to his weak legs, slouched on, till of a sudden he found that he was following his own boot tracks. He was walking inacacti maze. N’gibbidi was stockaded by a maze of cacti. He sank down to the earth again. He heard, or thought he heard, voices close by. He imagined eyes leering through the cacti; leering, jeering, evil faces mock- ing his plight. Well, he would show them. Men or devils, he would show them! He would take a cotton print from his pack, tear it to pieces and mark his trail. He drew himself up on his knees and reached for his pack. The movement sent the blood into his dizzy head. He fell prone and lost consciousness. Men-shapes with monstrous heads of bone two feet or more long, with protruding jaws and gleaming teeth, were bending over him. —— this’fever! Nightmarish hands were tugging at his clothes. No; they were lift- ing him. Beings with arms and legs were lifting him shoulder high and bearing him along. Arms and legs like human beings but with ossified heads like crocodiles, a bony and shiny in the morning light. Croc- odile skulls! Ought to have thought of that —frightfulness—nigger stuff. He lapsed again into delirium. A burning throat, a hot, clammy abomi- nation plastered to his skin, a bed of the same stuff, patches of sweating clay walls showing through vapors that smelled of stablings, heads, brown arms, twin breasts appearing and dissolving in the steaming vapors were the notations of Roach’s re- turning senses. He tried to rise, but a witch-doctor painted in red ocher and alumi chalk appeared suddenly at his side and pushed him down, then took him by his nose, pinching the nasal passages. Roach gasped for air, and received a wooden spoonful of lime and red pepper. He struggled to bring his will power to marshal his senses to learn what was being done to him. He made out a charcoal brazier and a pot of GOMIGIOO (©