Avon Fantasy Reader No. 11 — page 55: what you’re looking at

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

The flames which illuminated the huts and big house leaped out of a kind of crude stone furnace. In a pit in front of this furnace worked a small wizened figure with a ladle and a sort of pot. The pot, Mogglesby suspected, held gruesome evidence, He quickened his steps, expecting to see the wizened black devil of a chef put the pot somehow on the fire. Loaga, the head-man, called out with an attempt at a concealed warning— “Sammu, the governor's agent!” “Go on with your work!” interrupted Mogglesby. He turned to the dig- nified Negro. “I don’t want to stop anything.” Very probably both calls were unheard in the subdued roar of the fire. The monkey-like creature in the pit dropped his ladle, seized a poker and began jabbing at the base of the Erenace. Just as the crowd came up around the pit a stream of liquid fire burst out of the hole where Sammu had punched. The mannikin seized the clay container and with all his straining muscles and tendons in his neck outlined in the brilliant light pouring at his feet, he swung the pot under and caught it. Then he leaped back, rub- bing his skin where the hissing sparks had found him out. Mogglesby stepped back to Loaga’s side, blinking his eyes against the incandescence. He turned away and motioned with his thumb. “I’m interested to know what’s in the pot, Loaga,” he inquired. The head-man's face lengthened. “That devil Sammu—lI don’t know what he has put in.” “It looks to me about the right size to hold a head,” said Mogglesby—and thought to himself, “Of all damnable and elaborate ways of cooking a human head.” “I don’t know,” repeated the head-man uneasily. “We'd better see,” suggested the Englishman. “Let’s open the thing and take a look.” The head-man became unexpectedly complaisant. “All right, let’s open it. Come, Sammu,” he called to the little chef. “Open up the pot!”’ | The wizened black man came out his absorption before the fire. “What?” he called above the noise of the flames. “Open the pot, so the white man can see what’s in it.” “No, not yet,”’ he called in a voice hoarse from heat. Loaga stepped forward quickly and took a spear from one of the men. “Yes, Sammu,” he ordered, and lifted his weapon to break open the clay. | The next moment the cook Sammu thrust aside the assegai, leaped out of the pit and laid tnto the head-man with extraordinary agility. What rendered him formidable was his hot poker. Loaga began trying to fence the iron aside. Three or four spearsmen ran in to get a jab at the pot. Sammu swung his red-tipped iron on them, leaping and swinging from one to an- other. It was an absurd sight, the big black men jumping away from the chef's iron and careful not to touch the little man with the edge of their long keen blades. Then suddenly, while two lancers held Sammu's poker in quod, a third 33 comicbooks.com