Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

94 not go back many years to call up the hor- rific burial of a King of Ashantee; a grave- pit of half an acre, and all the king’s wives and a thousand or more slaves and the king’s dogs’ limbs broken with clubs and all thrown into the grave-pit, to accompany the king to Abamabo. But the pros and cons of the question were not for Roach. It was decided in his emotions. One day Kolo brings a Koran, and how can Roach, after such hospitality and so many amiable discourses, refuse the friendship oath? So, black hands resting on white on the Koran, eye looking into eye, Roach accepted the sacred tie. “Now we sleep behind the Koran,” bayed Kolo with deep satistaction—or was it relief. ‘‘Now we sleep behind the Koran.” Exactly as if he said in trium- phant faith, “Now I have you bound by friendship, conscience and honor.” Not for nothing had Kolo put the white man to a searching sizing up at their first meeting in Bilibibs’ village. Had the wise old Moses wanted a first-hand estimate of the man whose patience his fealty chief had been unable to wear down? Not for noth- ing had Kolo traveled far, sizing up traders and officials. Had he penetrated Roach’s simple large-heartedness and worked out a bit of applied psychology? Not unlikely. ‘““Now we sleep behind the Koran.” Fatal words to Roach’s quest. Here the fortune seeker’s drama might have risen to a soul-tearing conflict. But Roach never consciously surrendered his tin hope. He was gently flimflammed by the greatest of hard-luck-story artists, and didn’t know he was stalemated in this hard game of fortune hunting till he found him- self actually plotting with Kolo to secure N’gibbidi against the greed of capitalism. Great indeed must have been Kolo’s faith in the bonds of the Koran oath and in Roach’s honor, but they found no other way to block the exploiters than that Roach should acquire sole mining and trading rights to the country under the sariki’s rule. So Kolo called his Galadima, prime minister or secretary of state, an ancient with horn spectacles, who, with indigo pen, inscribed on goatskin parch- ment the concession, all three then signing. The umbrella passed to the possession of Kolo as the “‘consideration”’ in the contract, all legal and fine. Of course it was under- Adventure stood that this was only a friendly con- spiracy; the concession would lie inoper- ative, at least as long as Kolo lived. That done, Roach was escorted beyond the cacti maze. For farewell The Burr took the white hands of the passerby and breathed on them the blown blessing, saying, as be- tween the Koran-sworn— “Brother, you will tell the whites we are @ poor people.” So Roach was the lad who must turn propagandist and give it out that there were no worth-while pickings in N’gibbidi. If the idea of crocodile skulls and a maze of thorny cacti arresting the driving forces of civilization—finance, church, trade— were laughable, what of a scallywag, whose sole expenditures on three weeks voyaging was cut plug and a cheap cotton-wool suit, cap and pair of shoes bought at Las Palmas, a scallywag with a bit of inscribed parch- ment blocking Sir Samuel Mons? It was cruel, but almost a duty, to indi- cate to Roach how slight were his founda- tions: He had secured old Kolo’s dream ina way that revealed much anxious thinking, which in turn showed how deeply he had taken to heart his obligations to his Koran oath. He had, on a former home trip, scouted up in London an American lawyer and used his services to igcorporate the concession in America. Nations are very sensitive about attacks on their foreign investments. In a word, Roach had enlisted the guns of the United States in Kolo’s behalf, and stood ready to enlist the sentiment anent the self- determination of small peoples. But one of these days old Kolo will be paying his debt to Allah—dying. Then Roach will eliminate the danger to N’gib- bidi legend and traditions by removing the tin, with labor imported from the Pagan Belt; the me?-monsters and the cacti maze guarding th« Dance to the Ancestral Spirits beneath the baobab will disappear forever. Was he conscious of great renunciation? He said he was returning to the coast by the same boat; couldn’t afford a holiday ashore. And only a sentiment stayed him from grabbing offanimmediatefortune. But he was utterly unconscious of self-sacrifice. “TI savvy the blacks and they savvy me. They’ve got their rights as much as we. I’m no blooming Cecil Rhodes.”’ No, Roach would never be a Cecil Rhodes, nor a knighted Mons. GCOMIGIOO (C©