Argosy, Vol. 122, No. 1 — page 46: what you’re looking at

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

36 saw his prey just out of his reach. He gazed at it, and his mouth watered, while his cranky craft went down-stream, spinning slowly in the current. He lay flat on the floating fungoid, and strove to reach eut and grasp the end of the spear. | The raft tilted and nearly flung him over- board again. A little later he discovered that it sank more readily on one side than on the other. the greater thickness—and consequently greater. bueyancy—of the part which had grown next the recks of the river-bank. Burl found that if he lay with his head stretching above that side, it did not sink into the water. He wriggled into this new position, then, and waited until the slow revolution of his vessel brought the spear- | shaft near him. He stretched his fingers and his arm, and touched, then grasped it. A moment later he was tearing strips of flesh from the side of the fish and cramming the oily mess into his mouth with great en- joyment. He had lost his edible mush- room. That danced upon the waves several yards away, but Burl ate contentedly of what he possessed. He did not worry about what was before him. That lay in the future, but suddenly he realized that he was being carried farther and farther from Saya, the maiden of his tribe whe caused strange bliss to steal ever him when he contem- - plated her. The theught came to him when he vis- -ualized the delight with which she would receive a gift of part of the fish he had caught. He was suddenly stricken with dumb sorrow. He lifted his head and leoked longingly at the riverbanks. A long, monotonous row of strangely col- ored fungus growths. No healthy green, but pallid, cream-colored toadstools, some bright orange, lavender, and purple molds, vivid carmine “rusts” and _ mildews,, spreading up the banks from the turgid slime. The sun was not a ball of fire, but merely shone as a bright golden patch in the haze-filled sky, a patch whose limits could not be defined or marked. In the faintly pinkish light that filtered down through the air a multitude of flying objects could be seen. Now and then a cricket or a grasshopper made its bullet- That was due, of course, to. ‘mighty warriers in their world. THE ARGOSY. like flight from one spot to another. Hugh butterflies fluttered gayly above the silent, seemingly lifeless world. Bees lumbered anxiously about, seeking the cross-shaped flowers of the monster cabbages. Now and then a slender-waisted, yellow-stomached wasp flew alertly through the air. Burl watched them with a strange indif- ference. The wasps were as long as he him- self. The bees, on end, could match his height. The butterflies ranged, from tiny creatures barely capable of shading his face, to colossal things in the folds of whose wings he could have been lest. And- above him fluttered dragon-flies, whose long, spindle- like bodies were three times the length ef his own. Burl ignored them all. Sitting there, an incongrueus creature of pink skin and soft brown hair upon an orange fungus floating in midstream, he was filled with despen- dency because the current carried him for- ever farther and farther from a certain slen- der-limbed maiden of his tiny tribe, whose glances caused an odd commotien in his breast. The day went on. Once, Burl saw upon the blue-green mold that there spread up- ward from the river, a band of large, red, Amazon ants, marching in orderly array, to raid the city of a colony of black ants, and carry away the eggs they would find there. The eggs would be hatched, and the small black creatures made the slaves of the bri- gands who had stolen them. The Amazon ants can live only by the labor of their slaves, and for that reason are Later, etched against the steaming mist that over- hung everything as far as the eye could reach, Burl saw strangely shaped, swollen branches rearing themselves from the ground. He knew what they were. A hard- rinded fungus that grew upon itself in pecu- liar mockery of the vegetation that had vanished from the earth. And again he saw pear-shaped objects above some of which floated little clouds of smoke. They, too, were fungus growths, puffballs, which when touched emit what seems a puff of vapor. These would have towered above Burl’s head, had he stood beside them. cComiclbooks.com