Argosy, September 1955 — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

SUMMER IN SALANDAR 29 “‘ It was really very good of you,” she said. ‘‘ My name is Vane.” He checked an impulse to say, “ Spelt in which way? ”’ and she held out a hand covered with a long yellow glove. This glove, reaching to her elbow, matched a dress of yellow linen that had no sleeves. ““T know you think I’ve come at the wrong time of year,’’ she said. ‘** Not at all.” ‘““ No?” she said. “ I thought I heard you say so.” He was so irritated that he was not really conscious of helping her down the gangway. He felt instead that the gangway had begun to float on air. It was nothing but a shaky ladder of cotton- reels swaying above the calm sea. It seemed almost perpendicular, pitching him forward as he went down first and waited to help her into the launch below. The red triangular pennant of the company drooped above the burnished deck-house and she said, staring beyond it, ‘‘ Everybody told me it was so brilliant. So much flashing colour. But the rocks are black. It looks burnt out, somehow.” | “'That’s just the summer,”’ he said. Out of politeness he stared with her at the shore. He thought there was a great deal of colour. It was simply that it was split into a fractional mosaic of blacks and browns, of bleached pinks, | and the dull ruby reds of house-tops half smothered by green. A tower of pale yellow, the new school, was raised like a fresh sugar-stick above the black sand of the shore, at the end of which an astonishing summer residence of blue tiles, polished as a kitchen stove, was wedged into the cliff. ‘Two or three rowing-boats, piled with white baskets, with cur- tains of island embroideries in scarlet and green, were motionless on the oily bay, where in the high season a hundred of them clamoured about liners like fighting-junks, manned by brown shivering men diving for silver. Lines of high-prowed fishing-boats, upcurved like horns, striped in green and blue and ochre, were pulled up along the water-front, and far away and high above them he could see the water-splash of a spouting /evada, poised like gathered spittle in a fissure of rock and eucalyptus forest, pure white in blinding sun. He suddenly felt himself defending all he saw. He wanted to say that there was plenty of colour. Only the sun, burning fero- ciously, created an illusion of something cindery, melting dully away. “‘ It’s just a question of—”’ ““Oh! my bag,”’ she said. She stood on the lowest rung of the gangway, lifting helpless arms, imploring him with a smile. ‘“‘ In my cabin—so sorry— _ twenty-three—you'll see it. Probably on the bed.”’ As he mounted the ladder quickly, more insecure than when he had come down, he remembered that cabin twenty-three was one of four on the boat deck and he walked straight for it, before the purser could speak or stop him. comiclbooks.conn