Argosy, Vol. 111, No. 1 — page 125: what you’re looking at

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

ISLE OF McKay could see that Parks was rapidly tiring,..and he called out low encourage- ment. The girl glided after her father, facing him, her eyes wide open, without expression, barefooted—McKay winced as he realized how the hot sand must scorch her tender feet—and he set Kekko, an ex- pert in such things, to braid swiftly the primitive, but effective, sandals made from wide and fibrous leaf-lengths. | She wore a covering of snow-white tapa- cloth draped like a Grecian garment. Her light-brown hair, shimmering in the sun to gold, streamed down her back below her waist. Her elfin face was peculiarly wist- ful, and McKay felt the strong appeal of her runnimg through him like heady wine. Nearer and nearer they came, to all in- tents and purposes a wizard who held a girl under some uncanny incantation and was leading her off for some fell purpose of his craft. So it would seem to the common people. The priests might think differently. At the sound of McKay’s voice in her own tongue, the set expression of the girl’s eyes vanished, and a light sprang into them, such a light as McKay had seen from the banyan bough. With the change, the reason for her almost marvelous preservation from the lust and cruelty of Ponda and the rest —no one of whom had in all probability ever seen a white woman before save for an occasional albino of their own tribe with skin like that of a dried and bleached fish— flashed upon McKay’s mind. Lenna Parks had played mad, and played it successfully. They had believed her pos- sessed of spirits of the dead. Ponda had used this for his own advantage, had meant to establish the girl as his oracle. How much of sanctity he had himself endowed her with was doubtful. Sooner or later he would have broken through it. At last Parks headed into the trail, al- most exhausted, staggering. As she entered the shelter of the bush his daughter sprang toward him with a cry of pity. McKay was stripping the disguise from him, revealing Parks in undershirt and duck trousers that were fouled and torn. He was gaunt to emaciation, unshaven and haggard. But for McKay he would have fallen. But he braced himself and smiled at his daughter. DRUMS. 115 ‘All right, Lenna, we’re out of it at last. I can go on.” While McKay upheld the captain, Sime brought the green sandals to the girl, who took them with a grateful look and slipped them on, binding them deftly with strips of creeper-stem with which Kekko had in- geniously fitted them. ‘“ Better be pushing along,” suggested McKay. ‘“ How did you get clear?” ‘““T heard your voice in Ponda’s cave. I was at the back. It gave me courage to slacken the sennit on my arms and legs. When he came in just now in his devil-bird outfit, I tackled him from behind—with these.” He held out hands that, still sinewy, were shaking.. ‘Kill him?” asked McKay. ““T don’t know. His neck was armed with strings of shells. But I choked the black tongue out of his mouth. If they’d fed me— Let’s go.” ‘““ How about your pearls?” asked Mc- Kay suddenly. In the unexpected appear- ance of Parks and the swift moving of events, he had forgotten them, as Parks himself seemed to have done. _ “ Hang the pearls!” cried Parks irritably. The man was plainly at the limit of his endurance. ‘ Let’s get aboard your ship. Lenna, come! the pearls. They are safely hidden.” McKay did not agree with him. It was extremely probable that, with their prison- ers escaped, the tribe would fear reprisal. About the only thing the natives every- where in the group feared was the British gunboat that made its regular patrols of the coast, with sudden swoops on spots needing a lesson. The tribe would disperse or migrate, and they would be exceedingly likely to take the demit with them with all their sacred things. ‘“‘ Hidden just where, sir?’’ persisted Mc- Kay. ‘In the body of the demit?” The girl flashed him a glance, half surprised, a little indignant. ‘Damn you!” exploded Parks weakly. We can come back and get’ ‘They are in the skull, if the pearls are all. you think about. I am concerned about the safety of my daughter.” “So am I,” returned McKay mildly, GOMIIGIOO S CO