Argosy, Vol. 123, No. 2 — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

WHAT FEAR IS. and went with a roar to the bottom of the cleft, perhaps two hundred feet below, leav- ing behind it a thin network of vines and green leaves fluttering in the whirlpool of air. What they had crossed was a mass of loose earth, wedged for the time between two shoulders‘of rock. Black Adam turned ashen and fell on his knees—sick. Houston laughed, gave him five minutes in which to conquer his nausea, and plodded ‘on. That night: they slept in a hut—a circle of scarce five feet with a conical, thatched roof and a single cross rafter, a teak slab for the door, and broad palm leaves for the sides. Here they curled up and slept. In the night Houston awoke to the touch of Black Adam’s hand. “ Housie!” said the negro. “I hear a noise!”’ ; “Good!” said the white man, without moving. But he became conscious after a moment of a steady, lisping rustle that seemed to come from all sides of the hut— a slow scrape through the grass and against the palm leaf that made the sides of the hut. The palm leaf bulged in for a moment at one point—at the same moment it gave for an inch at the opposite side of the hut. The white man rolled over, got to his knees, and peered through the Jomt where the roof came to the wall. The clouds had lifted a bit, and in the sick moonlight he saw a rippling, rounded form that gleamed dustily. It.«noved in slow waves so close to the hut that the dry leaf rasped under the touch, but still touched it so lightly that it did not break. Houston watched a half minute before he saw the suddenly tapering tail, and then, not three feet from it, the small, wedge- shaped head that moved with steady poise a half foot off the ground. He felt for his saber, grasped it, and stepped over Black Adam’s legs toward the door. “Gawd!” whimpered the negro. ain’t going to open. the door!” ‘Let go!”’ whispered Houston as he felt the other grasp his wrist convulsively. “Let go, tn-head! It’s better to have him come in the door than under the wall!” Houston was Black Adam’s god, and his * You 229 hold on life; he let go and swung up on the single rafter with his head pressed against the thatch. The white man drew back the teak slab a half foot, and knelt behind it with the wavy Malayan kris held aloft. The slow ripple went on as steady as the wash against a river bank; the wedge- shaped head went past the door with ma- jestic slowness, and the smooth form fol- lowed it. The second time, without a hitch in that even progression, the head turned in at the door, and Houston struck—then slammed the door shut and put his back against it. The hut shook under the titanic lashing of the whip-cord body outside—within they heard the snap, snap, snap of closing jaws. The thrashing body drew off into the grass without touching their shelter—Houston felt about with his saber until he found the head, and thrust it outside, then lighted a match and laughed when he saw Black Adam shivering on his perch. ‘Gawd lumme!” he said. “ Where’s the peanuts for the gorilla!” Then he stretched out on the ground. “What you going to do now, boss?” “Go to sleep, tin-head, what else?” Within five minutes he was sound asleep; Black Adam stayed on his perch until day- light, then fell asleep and tumbled off. And with curiously meticulous care, Houston shaved every morning. ~ The monsoon broke. Under their eyes the padauk trees turned from greenish yel- low to gold, and with that sudden bloom came a flake of water almost as hot as that which drips from an engine valve. Then the world seemed to turn to a gray mist of water; the ridge beyond which lay Kettoree faded into a fog of rain, and the flat country in which they traveled turned into a lake full of swimming wild life. Luck was with them—they found a hut on piles and in it a teak-log canoe with paddles. They put to sea with Houston in the stern and the “kullah”’ in front, bailing with his hat to keep the craft afloat. The water rose above the tips of the ele- phant grass, and on the ridges they could hear the breaking of the padauk branches as the tiny, cuplike flowers filled with water. DOOLK C©