All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

70 beam of sunshine above his head; then it crashed on the rock at his feet, rebounded wildly from wall to wall of the landing- chamber, and lay still in the middle of its floor. Nambe regarded it with bulging eyes. Stepping backward as cautiously as though he trod on pigeons’ eggs, he lifted a leg over the threshold of the postern. ‘“ Me go-um back camp now,” he whispered. The thing that had come down the an- cient staircase to meet the intruders, though chipped and battered by its rude career, was still recognizable. It was a gray human skull, which sat upright on its base and regarded them blankly out of its cracked eye-sockets. Arnold stooped and picked it up. Nambe Shrank farther through the doorway, as though bent upon eliminating himself gradually from the situation. “Who could have thrown it?” was Jim’ S first thought. At once a number of ways occurred to him by which it might have been started on its perilous course. It must have lain at the very brink of the stairs. A touch had toppled it, and it had come on, gathering new impetus each time it struck the rock. And what had given the first impulse to its flight? Perhaps a bird had its nest at the foot of the wall, and it or its young had fluttered against the skull and displaced it. A squirrel might have done it; or perhaps it had been plaything for the cub of one of the small, spectacled bears of the regions, which live timidly in hidden caves on the rocky heights. It might have been merely the prank of a sportive gust of wind. ‘“‘Come on, Nambe; probably the wind blew it down,” said Jim, moving on across the platform. -Now Nambe, after his own fashion, be- lieved in a hereafter, and called it Panoi; and would have followed Brutus F inlayson Kelly thither without hesitation or question. But Jim Arnold was not Kelly; and Nambe was not prepared to die—and he smelled death at the top of that steep stairway. Skulls did not jump down-stairs at people TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK. ALL-STORY WEEKLY. for nothing. Probably there were more of them up there; and they were not pleasant things to meet in battle. Whoever heard of a man, even a white tamal, killing a skull? It was not done in Nambe’s coun- try. Nambe’s private view was that only a idiot would try. So the islander shook his fuzzy head vig- orously and withdrew from the platform. ‘““Nambe go-up back camp, quick new,” he repeated, and took a step downward, clutching at the pit of his stomach, where, under his husks of civilization and next to his naked hide, reposed his vele-mana, the magical pouch which every true Melanesian catries to preserve him from spiritual dam- age. | Jim saw that Nambe’s superstitions were rampant, and that it would be useless to cajole them. e “Well, anyway, wait here for me,” he said. “ I won't be gone long; and I’ll carry this thing with me if you don’t care for its company.”’ ‘““Nambe wait-um down dar.” The islander indicated the foot of the stairs,-and began to clamber down, humming to himself a Savoan ditty as a crutch for his lame courage. Jim, cool-eyed and_ unafraid, started on the steep ascent. At the foot of the stairs Nambe sat down “where he could see the comforting gleam of the leaping camp-fire across the valley, and waited for the young white tamal to go up and meet the ghosts. Only once he looked up. Jim already had disappeared. The sun’s light failed rapidly. Night was peering over the distant summits and preparing to descend into the valley. Curl- ing white mists of evening crept up to the bare rocks and clothed them sor their night’s repose. Nambe took out the big gold watch which Kelly had given him. Ten minutes he counted on its dial—fifteen—twenty— From the misty heights of the hill rang a hoarse cry. It was not repeated. Before its echoes ceased to tremble on the hillside, Nambe, without a backward glance, trotted off across the twilighted meadow to report at camp that an evil had befallen. Don’t forget this magazine is issued weekly, and that you will get the continuation of this story without waiting a month. comiclboolk C©