Avon Fantasy Reader No. 11 — page 69: what you’re looking at

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

aimless note or two, then apparently as he was about to walk out the door he paused at Mopgglesby’s side and whispered in a tone evidently to be con- cealed from Luomo— “Don't press the point, sir. It is an affair of the heart.” “A what?” This Keckechex was Luomo’s husband, sir, among the gorillas, and he turned her out, sir, got a divorce in a way, and naturally, being a monkey, without alimony, sir.”’ ‘How did you learn this?’ asked Mogglesby in the same tone, although both must have been overheard by the woman herself. “Loaga told me, sir.” “YT see—well—um ... And he made arrangements to start with old Luomo on the following morning. The doctor wanted to arrange a parade of the M’Bembi to see the gov- ernor’s agent off. The doctor was now an officer in the brotherhood and the emblem of his office was three rooster feathers tied to the shaft of his asse pai, . Mogglesby, however, declined the invitation. Mopgplesby walked behind the black woman, African fashion, in the pro- found gloom of the jungle. At long distances apart, when a ray of sunlight did fall unobstructed into the rank growth, it burned like a lamp in the darkness. The white man said almost nothing to his companion. The fancy came to him that for millenniums the animals must have pursued their way in silence save for a passing grunt or growl, but their intellectual silence must have been complete. For millenniums no living thing made any mental com- ment on the world around it. Leaves had no reference to the trees. There were no seasons, no directions, nether heat nor cold but instead brute dis- comforts. Without words the universe shattered into surfaces and sounds of utter disconnection. In the midst of these musings Luomo looked back and held up a finger at the white man. A kind of tautening went through the Englishman's nerves at the culmination of this fantastic expedition. ‘Do you see them?” he asked, peering through the green gloom. For answer the woman filled her heavy bosom and emitted the peculiar animalish cry that Mogglesby had heard before. At the sound a queer thing happened. What seemed to be a liana swing- ing from a teak tree curled upward in great swift loops and lost itself in the upper chambers of the teak. The thing sent a shiver along the white man’s nerves. “What made it get away like that?” he queried, peering up into the twi- light of the tree. “I made the cry of a wood-man, master; the boa is afraid of the wood- men. Every creature knows what to strike and what to avoid.” The Englishman followed the black woman gingerly under the teak. 67 comicbooks.com