Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

8384 ities when they entered the country. But they were ten to our two. . Mercer voiced the problem most emphat- ically. “Ten men in a house,” he declared. ‘“‘ Maybe we can catch them all asleep. But even if they are; how are we going to get them out? There’d be a row, and we don’t want any noise. Besides, there’s always this confounded daylight here. If we tied them up somebody might see us when we got outside. How do we get them out of that house without any rumpus, and down to that boat? That’s what I don’t see.” “‘ [—do—that,”’ said Anina suddenly. She had spoken in English, and we looked at her in amazement.. She lisped the words in her soft, sweet voice, haltingly, like a little child. Then she turned to Miela and poured out a torrent of her native language. Mercer stared at her in undisguised admira- tion. As Miela explained it, Anina proposed that she go into Tao’s house alone, and decoy his men down to the boat where we could capture them. “ But how will she get them there?’ I exclaimed. ‘‘ What will she tell them?” ‘‘ She says she can make them think she is one of those few of our women who sympathize with their cause,” Miela ex- plained. ‘“‘ And she will say that the earth- man who escaped from them she has seen lurking about their boat; perhaps he plans to steal it. She will go there with them, and they can recapture him.” “ They might not all go,” ‘We want to get them all.” “Tt is Anina’s thought that they will all go, for they fear this earth-man much— and all would go to make sure of him.” I could not feel it was right for us to let Anina do so daring a thing, and Mercer agreed with me heartily. But Anina insist- ed, with a fire in her eyes and flushed cheeks that contrasted strangely with her usually gentle demeanor. In the end Mercer and I gave in, for we could think of no better plan, and Miela was confident Anina would not be harmed. It was about what would correspond with ten o’clock in the evening on earth when said Mercer. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. the girls began to arrive. We waited until all fifty of them had come in. Miela named a place on the shore of the sea known to them all. They were to take the platform—starting in about two hours, when the city would be quiet—and there they would wait for us to join them in the boat. We four started out together, but soon Anina left us to make her way to Tao’s house alone. Mercer, Miela and I then hurried as fast as we could through the city down to the marshlands, and to the secluded. spot on the bayou’s bank where the boat was lying. The bayou here was about a hundred feet wide, a winding, brackish stream, lined on both sides with trees whose roots were in the water and whose branches at times nearly met overhead. Its banks were a tangled mass of tree roots, huge ferns, pal- mettos and some tall upstanding kind of water grass. Half submerged logs jutted out into the sluggish current, making it in places seem almost impassable. A narrow metal boat—a very long and very narrow motor boat with a thatched shelter like a small cabin over part of its length—lay fastened to a tree near at hand. I noticed at once some mechanism over its Stern. We had come up quietly to make sure no one was about. Now we hid ourselves close to the boat and waited with apprehension in our hearts for the arrival of Anina with Tao’s men. Half an hour, perhaps, went by. The silence in this secluded spot hung heavy about us. A fish broke the glassy surface of the water; a lizard scurried along the ground; a bird flitted past. Then, setting our hearts pounding, came the soft snap- ping of underbrush that we knew was the cautious tread of some one approaching. I was half reclining under a fallen tree, with a clump of palmettos about me. I parted their fronds carefully before my face. A few yards away a man was standing mo- tionless, staring past mé and apparently listening intently. He moved forward after a moment. I feared he was coming almost upon us, but he turned aside, pene Kelsie Ge ‘he