Argosy, Vol. 111, No. 1 — page 110: what you’re looking at

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

sle b/ WHAT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED EARING from Faroa, black mate of Captain Parks, of the schoener Huimanu, of the imprison- ment of the latter and his daughter Lenna on the cannibal Isle of Drums, Aoba, Thad McKay, captain of the Mbelema, with Frisco Fred Sime, whom he had befriended, reached Aoba after an adventurous passage. Going ashore unseen with the help of Kekko, a Papuan trailer, they viewed a native dance from the protection of a tree, when Sime, seeing Lenna dancing alone in the moonlight, attempted to shoot a native who lifted her as she fell, swooning, to the ground. But McKay was just in time to prevent Sime’s foolhardy act, and, once more safely aboard the schooner, Faroa told them that Parks and Lenna were yet alive, simply because of the form-r's ability to teach Ponda, the wizard chief, his store of teriki (tricks). It was apparent also, frm Faroa’s tale, that Parks’s store of pearls were hidden in the demit (effigy) of the dead kirg, Motonui, which Parks had fashioned. That night, aboard the Mbelema, McKay, after mentioning one “ Beauty” Bligh as a par- ticular scoundrel who had done much to antagonize the natives, prepared his own teriki, looking to his visit to Aoba. And meanwhile, arriving at Hope Island, McKay’s headquarters, in his schooner, Wave, where he marooned Pualele, a girl of whom he had tired, Bligh destroyed McKay’s notices of his departure for Aoba, and set out for the Isle of Drums with his bestial mate, Larkin, with designs on Parks’s pearls. At Aoba, after an interview with Ponda, McKay and Sime, going ashore with a bodyguard, the latter impressed the natives by some marvelous shooting, McKay visiting Ponda in his devil- house and successfully impressing him with some flaming terzkz, based largely on potassium, and promising him, later, to show him the wizardry of the burning sand. Parks was imprisoned some- where about, and passing the tambu-house, at McKay’s instruction Sime whistled a few bars of ‘‘The Star-Spangled Banner,” which Lenna heard. Parks, also, had heard the tones of McKay’s voice as he talked with Ponda. There was a glimmering of a plan in his mind, but ‘t was useless without assistance. Finding a sharp edge of obsidian, he essayed to cut the cords that bound his wrists. Blood came, and he was forced to go carefully lest Ponda might see the wounds too soon; but he persisted, and at last the fastening was loose. of | )rums J. Allan Dunn Author of “ The Butterfly Orchid,” etc. CHAPTER VIII. THE FEAST. ITH swift fingers Parks loosened his ankles and then vigorously rubbed legs and arms back to good circulation. He imagined that his hands would be kept tied behind him until the white men had left Motonui as they had been so fastened for the first time this morning. Ponda would let him go without food or drink for a day or so without the slightest compunction. , They had had an argument about the manner in which Parks was dispensing knowledge, with Parks certain that the moment he could no longer show anything new in the way of teriki, nor convince Ponda that he had something yet to show, his doom, and that of his daughter, was swift and sure. It was equally sure that he could show no ¢eriki trussed in this fashion. He had not been gagged. That was unnecessary. The first cry, and Ponda would have speared him. Did this Mak- kei know of his imprisonment? ‘The un- certainty was torture enough to spur him to some action, however futile it might prove. When they had bound him early that morning by the light of flaring palm torches, his jailers had carelessly flung aside the coil of spare sennit in their anxiety to be on hand to see the arrival of the strangers. This he found in the dark. This story began in The Argosy for July 26. 100 GOMIIG OOO SS (CO