Argosy, Vol. 111, No. 1 — page 121: what you’re looking at

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

ISLE OF something. That’s one accomplishment Ponda and his crowd don’t savvy. What’s more, I’ve noticed it always makes them uneasy. They think you're talking secret language to our gods. All same Ponda and his Pan’s pipes. Make it a march, not too fast. Get the boys together. I’ll make Ponda furnish the branches. It ’ll mystify them all the more completely to think they have inspected and handled the parapher- nalia.”’ Boughs were brought and piled at Mc- Kay’s feet. Then the priests took up their stations outside the circle of wands, McKay inviting them to spread out so that they could surround the demit-stone of Tuakane. He mounted the rock, knelt, and appeared to whisper into the fissure, putting his head close down as if to receive an answer. Then, while the four boys with their rifles stood like graven images, waiting the command to march, he got Sime to hand him the boughs, and carefully, with many slight changes, spread them over the surface of the stone. Once more he knelt and spoke into the orifice that was supposed to be the ear of the shark god, and, under cover of the piled-up branches, lit a fusee and ignited the fuse, placing a mat of leaves and twigs above it, leaving air enough to supply the spark, but with the leaves diffusing the slight smoke that would unavoidably come from it. | He took the gaily decorated bamboo and slipped the cork from the neck of the vial. Then he took up his position, two feet out- side the margin where the stone joined the sand, Sime outside of him, three paces dis- tant, the native boys, in pairs, outside of Sime, rifles on shoulders, so that the rock was the hub of a wheel of which the peeled wands and the watchful priests, with Ponda, formed the rim, and McKay and his men a spoke that traveled slowly in a moving radius to the tune that Sime whistled. The air. was not inappropriate, considering that the spirit of Tuakane was supposed to be somewhere beneath his monument. John Brown’s body lies a moldering in the grave, whistled Sime, clear and high in the hope DRUMS. 111 that Lenna Parks, somewhere perdu, would hear and hearten: But his soul goes marching on. McKay plucked at the end of the pucker- ing string on the seam of his right leg and felt the powder trickling down his leg. He had taken off his shoes, though he had not asked Sime to do so, for the coral grit was painfully hot, even to McKay’s well- seasoned soles; and the mixture formed a little train upon the ground, blending so closely that it was hard for even McKay to distinguish it. Round he went twice, trailing his own tracks until the right-hand pocket was empty. Then he ordered an about-face, twitched the string on his left leg, and re- traced the order of march. He carried the bamboo high in his right hand, his arm extended. . Save for the whistling of ‘‘ John Brown,” the place was steeped in silence. The priests were pop-eyed, even to Ponda. Then a murmur ran round the circle of spectators. Sharp eyes had espied a film of smoke rising from the green leaves. The fuse was burn- ing bravely. McKay slid out his watch. He had two minutes more. The smoke was working in his favor. Ponda and his retinue had not thought of such a thing as a fuse; they knew that the base of the rock was in a spring of water, they themselves had brought the green leaves, Mak-kei had done nothing to them. This must be an answer to the spell he had spoken into the ear of Tuakane. And Tuakane was obeying the papalangi magic! When the mixture in his left pocket was nearly gone, McKay pressed fingers to his left trouser seam and arrested the flow. He was just opposite Ponda. He ordered Sime to take the boys out of the circle and walked toward Ponda, releasing the re- mainder of the powder. This was an after- thought, born of the manner in which the chlorate and granulated sugar blended with the grit of coral and shell. In front of Ponda he halted, and very carefully waved the tufted tip of bamboo in a slow circle, arresting the wizard’s at- tention, while the last of his mixture ran GOMIIGIOO S CO