Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 4, 1925 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

THE GOLD-DUST RAJAH. * You all right, Marcia?” sang out Wray next. The girl drew herself forward to answer. ‘Yes, uncle, thanks,” she answered cheer- fully. Her oval face was delicate and vivid- lv alive. ‘‘ Kwong'll have that cabin roof jerked off if he doesn't look out,” Wray went on. ‘‘ That would give you a nasty spill.” ‘““T can swim,” she called back, half laughing. “You don’t want to lose the shade of that pleasant roof, my dear,” Wray an- swered. ‘‘ And I don’t know where you'd find a foot of ground to land on—Kwong, you savvy keep away from shore. Keep out where vou are now. Don’t risk going over.” Kwong Wing, young, tall for one of his race, thin-bodied, under a loose shirt and wide, black trousers of black calico. had a smooth, unwrinkled face and a pair uf black eves that were as bright and liquid as the eves of abird. Though, as the praw he had been steering came too closely inshore, he had been forced to squat in the lee of the ogee roof, and cling hard to the gunwale to keep himself from being scraped into the yellow stream, he had uttered not a word of either pidgin or Chinese, but, unper- turbed, had gone on with his steering, keep- ing farther out in the river than the other craft of the line. And trom under her roof, Marcia Old- ham, as unconcerned as her Celestial steers- man, looked out eagerly—at the muddy river: the long string of strange boats, each prau with its quota of straining, gleaming, brown backs and regularly moving arms and paddles: at the two walls of jungle that came not only down to, but into the misty level of the stream; at the blinding green of those walls, which seemed to hold them off and keep them out in a sun which was every moment growing hotter—a green that was relieved only here and there by the vivid patches of color made where high- crowing orchids, or silvery clusters of ferns, waved droopingly out from tree-forks that were forty or fiftv feet above the procession. She saw few signs of animate life. Now and again a snake-darter emerged from the tangle and Jost itself quickly therein once more. At longer intervals what looked to 803 be a ridge of gray-brown soil above the bosom of the great stream shelved gently and softly from sight, as a crocodile slipped under the water. Soon after starting, while the fighting cocks were still noisily challeng- Ing one another, a few birds had been seen as well as heard. Now the forest was voice- less except when there sounded the chat- tering of monkeys, and the swishing of branches as the small animals, excited by the presence of the boats, protested angrily at having their territory invaded. Wray, whose praz was so close in to the unseen bank that the verdure trespassing on the river often combed the head cover- ings off the black hair of his paddlers, kept watch for the scolding inhabitants of the nearby green retreats. When he caught sight of one, up came a pistol and he took swift alim—when a very babble of wild cries answered the echoing sound of the shot and the rustling of branches became furious. Now he called back to his niece, twist- ing his roundish head on his soft-collared neck. ‘‘ We're going to pick up another white man, Marcia—at the next kampong. An ex-China Coast citizen.” Once more she leaned forward. deed?” she returned. teresting. Who is it?” “ Don’t Know,” her uncle answered care- lessly. ‘‘ Somebody Barker knows about. An American, I believe. Barker says the fellow is a kind of a queer fish, and has been up in the jungle here for three years—the only white. He’s been studving the Dvaks, it seems, and knows a lot about them. Also, they like him.” ‘Then I should think,” the girl answered, ‘that he’d be very useful to us.” ‘““That’s why we're taking him along,” her uncle declared. ‘‘I understand that he’s been in some sort of a nasty row back in the States, and is a sort of a self-made exile, you might say. Got into a tight squeeze, you see. Had to jump, probably, and jump to a spot where he can’t be erabbed too easily. Guess China wasn’t too safe.” “Poor thing!” ‘Lots of that complexion out here,” Wray went on. ‘ But you needn’t worry < In- “That sounds in- Conn GIOok