Avon Fantasy Reader No. 11 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

He sensed in his spine that a boa constrictor was looped somewhere in the limbs overhead. When Mogglesby was clear of the tree and could dismiss the quiver from his nerves a queer idea entered his head. Man, through his technical supe- riocity, had lost his citizenship in the animal world. Lions, boas, primates must be aware of a certain personality in one another. They would be like armed and equal powers subject to tacit treaties such as evidently obtained between the constrictors and the gorillas. And here was Mogglesby set out on the bizarre errand of renewing man’s citizenship in the archaic society of animals. A distant ululation in the jungle interrupted the white man’s Buddha-like reverie. Old Luomo answered it with her peculiar deep-lunged call. Then she turned toward Mogglesby and nodded. She called again and two or three of the inhuman cries answered from different directions. At the heavy grat- ing sounds, a weird feeling came over Mogglesby. He seemed to be sinking through layers of life into utter simplicities. He felt that if he descended into the simian world he might move down- ward through quadrupeds, fish, vermes, into the motionless peace of the very trees themselves—into the silence of the loam. And Mogglesby realized that for the first time in his life he had felt the premonition of death. ~~~ A great banyan lorded it over the jungle with a hundred columns, and among the complexity of its boles Mogglesby glimpsed the movement of the shambling, neckless wood-men. The black woman stationed the man at some distance from the banyan and approached alone. The Englishman watched her go in trepidation, but Luomo went up to the banyan with the freedom of habit. And as if to pive the white man’s nerves a final twist she vanished in its chambers of leaves. Thete atose inside the queer gibbering and chattering which Mogglesby had come to know. He kept his place, listening intently, trying to make out some of the regularities of a language, but it sounded as hopeless a blur as French sounds to an American. He could distinguish the black woman’s liphter voice with its human overtones among an animal gibbering, but that was all. _ Presently with rather a shock the Englishman saw an exodus of gorillas ‘from the banyan. They hurried away walking on their short legs and long arms, but somehow not conveying an idea of flight. Luomo appeared out of the banyan leaves and gesticulated for Mogglesby to approach. What had happened the white man could not imagine. He went forward curiously, paused just outside the vast tent of the banyan, then saw Luomo inside and entered. The tree seemed deserted. It held the peculiar effect of dreaming characteristic of trees in a perfectly still air. “Why did they all go away?” the white man asked the woman in a hushed tone. “So you could come up, master,” answered the woman simply. “They saw you were afraid, so they went away.” A queer sensation of having been understood where he did not under- 68 comicbooks.com