Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 4 — page 88: what you’re looking at

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

fey J. Allan Dunn, Auther ef “The Yellow Fetish,” “A Man te His Mate,” elec. CHAPTER I. UNDERCURRENT. ROM northeast to southeast, stretch- - ing a full quarter of the horizon, lift- ing high toward the zenith, loomed a somber, chaotic mass; folded and swollen in strange convolutions that slowly changed form, the semblance of some weird land- fall, stricken by convulsions, tumbling re- luctantly to ruin. The bulk of it was dull, threatening gray, shadowed with deepest, ominous purple in its canons and deep “caverns, the upper crags touched luridly with the hue of raw copper. The sea was like a sheet of polished brass, of no color—a glare of reflected light from the sun that was just beginning to wheel westward. It heaved in long, low hills, smooth as the breasts of a golden- skinned Apsasa dancing-girl. Only beside the bilges of the barkentine, fh the scanty shadow of the hull, the water took on tone. There wavering scallops of blue and bronze and green, the prismatic hues of a pea- cock’s tail, glided out in kaleidoscopic pat- terns, fading in the sunflare without a hint of foam. On the ship, flying-jib, jib and staysail, fore-skysail, royal and topgallant, drooped , flaccid, waiting for a breeze. The canvas hung from the lower yards of the bore in brails. The mainsail was down, held in loose gaskets, the mizzen set, sheeted-in; both topsails were furled. The Malay crew, tall and lean, with flat- tened dish-faces, light bronze of flesh, were setting up the stays of the mainmast, haul- ing in unison to their low drone of Bada-a- ak! Trama, tramah, transparent blue shadows shifted back and forth. Their coarse, black hair was con- fined in gaudy but sun-faded cloths, tied with prick-ears. Sarongs of brown cloth, patterned in red, skirted them to the knees. Elsewise they were naked, save for the oil that they had anofhted themselves with against tissue-smashing rays of the sun. ‘Over them presided their ¢ivdal, their self- appointed quartermaster; younger, slighter than any of them, but senior, greater in brain; master of their tasks, appointer and often administrator of their punishments. Over the half-poop deck an awning was stretched from mizzenboom to either rail. Beneath it, on rattan chairs, two women were stretched at full length, one twice the age of the other, both languid in the frightful, nerve-smashing heat of the Banda Sea. A white man leaned against the port rail near the after shrouds, surveying leisurely the younger of the women. eyes were half-closed, long lashes entirely shaded them, yet she was quite conscious of his regard, and uneasy under it, The man, first mate of the vessel, was physically good to look at. He wore a white shirt, open at the throat, the sleeves docked above the elbows, clean duck trousers, with a cummerbund of vivid orange 594 e a clooolK Original froma RO ALIA crac TNO OLA Her. tra-ma-ah!{ Their — CO