Argosy, Vol. 111, No. 1 — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

‘112 down his leg and made a little cone which he lightly tamped nearly flat with his heel. Once more he took out his watch, openly this time. Thirty. seconds! He deftly adjusted the hands so that they stood at exactly twelve. It was probable that Ponda knew something of the white man’s time-keeping methods. Undoubtedly he had seen a watch. Parks would have had one and perhaps had used it for terikz. ‘‘ You see, Ponda,’ he said. ‘‘ The white man’s box-that-ticks says it is noon. The shadows are at their shortest. Already the demit-stone of Tuakane shows where my fires are working under the sand, working in the water, waiting my word to leap through and burn. Behold!” He strode back toward the ring of powder, marked by his footprints. If he was a few seconds ahead of the fuse it would not matter much. He did not want to be behindhand. Raising his bamboo staff, he lowered it swiftly to the train, let- ting the acid run out. He leaped back. The rock was instantly surrounded by a corona of hissing flame, pale in the sun- shine, but unmistakably flame, smelling suggestively of the nether pit; to Ponda’s imagination of volcanic fumes. Had this white wizard summoned slumbering fires? A streak of it ran up to his feet and ended in a puff of stinking smoke and sand. With a muffled roar and a spurt of orange under a pall of smoke and uptossed frag- ments of green boughs, the dem#t-stone of Tuakane split apart. It was as if a miniature volcano had erupted. Ponda stood his ground, but it was too much for the priestlings. With yells, they fled under the falling fragments of twigs and leaves, smoldering, stinging scraps that scorched their shoulders as they ran blindly, covering their heads with their arms, stung to mad-speed, fearing they knew not what. But Ponda’s face betrayed his inner per- turbation. What might not this white wizard do? He might conjure up subter- ranean fire and force enough to destroy Motonui, all Aoba perhaps? The memory of the last upheaval of the island was still history rather than legend. And one of his own best bets, the rain-stone, the demit of Yuakane, was destroyed. THE ARGOSY. He covered his alarm with fierce shouts to his fleeing cravens, who halted at a dis- tance with rolling eyeballs fearful of trouble from any and all quarters, from the earth below or the sky above. Gingerly they came forward, surveying the stone, neatly quartered by the dynamite, the sand about it tossed up in all directions. Ponda, under the spur of McKay’s smile, approached more closely. McKay pointed out to him the fused remnants of the mixture scat- tered here and there. “That is burnt sand, Ponda,’ he said. ‘You saw the flames. And I merely whis- pered in the ear of your own god. What if I had shouted, Ponda?” The wizard looked at him half resentful, half respectful. “It was a good ¢erzki,” he admitted sul- lenly. ‘‘ You will show me how to do it?” ‘““If we come to terms, Ponda. When shall we make a talk?” McKay recognized that the moment had its touch-and-go. Ponda evidently felt humiliated. The white man’s trick had been too successful, too far ahead of any- thing that Ponda had ever done. When it began to be talked about his prestige might suffer beyond repair. ‘Will you show me now in the marat (temple) how to make the fire dance upon water? In secret? I will send my priests on ahead.” McKay saw Ponda’s aim. To appear at the temple with the white wizard and there retrieve his honors. It would be done at McKay’s expense, would serve to show that Ponda also was a supreme master of fire and water. He had his bottle of potassium pellets with him. He decided it might be well to do what Ponda asked. For the burning of the sands was the ¢eriki that Ponda would still covet, the spectacular flames in broad daylight, with the culminat- ing explosion that Ponda thought part of the regular performance. ‘“‘ All right,” he said. priests.” Ponda made a pompous speech. ‘The white man, Mak-kei, had done well,” he told them. ‘“ But he, Ponda, would show them greater things in the tem- ple. He would outdo this papalangi wizard ‘Send on your COMmiiclbooo® S (CO