Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

QUEEN OF THE NIGHT. ing it, kissing it, wildly, impetuously, like some one who having starved on the desert has found food. She whirled about, twining the scarf around her shoulders, letting the shimmer- ing soft stuff ripple over her bare arms; and then, snatching up another gorgeous piece of cloth, unwound it, and as it fluttered in the air, spun her body about so that the serape wrapped itself around her lithe hips. “Come now, my girl,” the boatswain laughed. “Off with your shoes! They’re the ugliest thing about you. Bare feet and anklets—that’s what go with this rig!” Next she peeled off her stockings—striped red cotton with runners down the backs and holes at the toes. With these off the boats- wain was treated to the prettiest olive- skinned ankles and arched feet he had ever seen. Whether the curious bands of silver with their engraved legends were bangles or an- klets he did not know. But these he clasped about her feet. Then came the first part of the costume: a flowing cloth of scarlet silk, upon which were designed certain Aztec symbols in gold cloth. She wound this tightly about her hips making a robe which fitted tightly about her bosom. The boats- wain tucked the last fold in under one arm. Next he took up the serape which was of a gorgeous yellow with a flowering of black like an iron filigree against the noon sky. This he wound tightly about her in the manner of a bodice. “ T’ve seen them wear it like this when we anchored at Para in Brazil and then again fine ladies wear it this way at bull fights in Tampico or chicken fights in Luzon. Now, then, for your hair, infanta. God, what hair! Pile it up, that’s the way! Coil it, braid it and put a mountain of curls on your head—like the Queen of Spain before she went to Paris!” The girl divided her hair in two luxuriant braids, then with her spread fingers combed one side into three long strands. This she braided while Tom Yarre looked on, pictur- ing to himself how he had seen coiffures under lace rebozas at Seville, or under kapok floss as the mestizos wore their hair in Manila. With the boatswain’s bizarre suggestions 659 it seemed that the very shape of Juana’s face was changed; the hair was pulled back tightly, displaying the warm, olive-colored forehead, and the thin, jet-black eyebrows; her eyes seemed more strange, upward- slanting, exotic. It was a beautiful coiffure —not only because of Tom’s imagination perhaps, but because no matter how she put it up it would have been beautiful. Some men might even have seen the beauty of it when her eyes glowed through the tangled wisps of it hanging over her forehead. “There you go now, my lady!” he cried, holding up the lantern triumphantly. “That’s the way to rig your hair so that men will crawl to you on hands and knees, And here—” He picked up the jade comb—that part of the loot apportioned to him by the skipper, which he had thought the most useless and insulting of all. ‘“ Let me stick this comb up here where it ‘ll look like the crown of a cockatoo! There you are, my beauty! It’s like a coronet to you, and it’s good for the skipper’s eye, damn him! He’ll swear to kill a dozen men for you—the old walrus. And keelhaul me if he won’t do it! The old lummox! Go after him and ask him to put his hooks on you—as he swore he would!” The boatswain stood back to survey the picture he had created. The figure of Juana in her regal garments was as ethereal as one of the velvet moths which flickered across the dusty beams of the lamplight. Tom Yarre could scarcely believe his eyes. “Go down and try your power,” he cried. “Tell them you are the daughter of a Span- ish grandee! A sailor from across the sea has brought you the news!” “And I am!” Juana cried. “ My father was wan grandee, even if in this country they prosecute him!” “Very well, tell them you are a descend- ant of Cortez and that rightfully you would be queen of this country.” “T will tell them! I will trample them under my feet! I will avenge the many wrongs that old Herzog has done to me, and for every blow his wife strike I will make her suffer tenfold. Madre de Dios but they will all wish they had never been born. If they had millstones about their necks, and if Gomichbooks (C@)