Avon Fantasy Reader No. 11 — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

is a victue in—well—in using men as the M’Bembi do, which I never realized until I visited the wood-men. You may go on with life here in the village in the usual way until this contest ts fought.” At such a concession from the white man Loaga was amazed and de- lighted. He invited Mogglesby to join the M’Bembi, assuring him that he would be made a head-man and would under no circumstances be eaten. The Englishman declined with a qualm of repulsion and went to his hut. He had hardly got to his sleeping place and stretched out on the panther skin bed when the thundering of the tom-tom broke out ia the idol house. The promptness with which Loaga had seized on Mogglesby’s permis- sion disturbed the governor's agent. He lay listening to the interminable uproar when the flap of his hut opened and a small figure whipped inside. “Governor,” whispered the doctor’s voice in a sort of horror, “what in the hell did you let ’em start that drumming again for. My God, this time, it may—it may be—’ The little man stood inside the hut peering out, looking up and down the street in the darkness. “Listen, Doctor,” said Mogglesby. “Light that lamp and sit down. I want to talk to a white man.” The rabbit of a man turned inside to obey the order; as he flipped his rigac lighter with unsteady fingers, he repeated in his aspirate: “But I—I tell you, Mr. Mogglesby, this time it—it may be me. I—I ought never to have joined the M’Bembi, Governor. Even in poker I never used to play for—for anything more than penny ante.” He wet his lips in the small light of the coconut oil flame. “That's exactly what I want to explain,” said the big man slowly. “‘Doc- tor, my visit to the wood-men has taught me a wonderful lot. Now, for instance, Keckechex couldn’t even understand the meaning of patriotism or public spirit or brotherly love. The wood-men simply have no con- cepts in that category.” | “Governor, what are you talking about?" inquired the little man blankly. “W eli—nothing—let that pass. Here’s what I want to tell you, Doctor. It seems to me all of our human emotions of pity, sacrifice, hero worship; our feeling for drama and pageantry; our temples, the beginnings of sculp- ture, our feeling of brotherhood, are all based fundamentally on canni- balism. If eur ancestors had not eaten each other for millions of years we would still be wood-men today, living in banyans without a tool to our hands, a roof over our heads or a work of art for our eyes.” “Governor,” shivered the doctor, “you are worse than Loaga. All he claims is that it makes a man brave and strong.” “I am saying the same thing in a different way. In essence Loaga is eternally right.” The little man suddenly began sniffling. “That’s—that’s all very well for you, Mr. Mogglesby, to sit here and be talking like that. You don’t have to go. But the tom-tom is beating and I have to go, and maybe I'll be killed and cooked and you could stop it all with a word. You wouldn’t be sitting here praising cannibalism if 73 comicbooks.com