Avon Fantasy Reader No. 12 — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

The speech ended with a volley of oaths that should have blasted their victim; then came the reply in port Pidgin from the voice that had sung the pantun: “Be not angry with thy servant, Tuan, Long have I followed you into the perils of trapping beasts and birds. Now I am trapped with you. Yet perhaps it was so written, Stange magic I have scen, yet never did I think to be caught by it. The spirit of my first woman entered into the body of a tigress. Now my spirit has entered into the body of a man of the woods.” A snarl ended the stentorian musings. Dineen pinched his own forearm until it hurt convincing himself that he was not dreaming. The crashing of tree branches ended the jungle parley. There was no more sleep for Dineen. At daybreak he led his men toward the purple gap in the hills and again camped at the edge of flat country bordering another crocodile-infested river. Leaving the men and supplics, Dineen and Inbam went forward, picking their way through masses of creepers and rotting deadwood to the gloom of mangroves bordering the water. From one twisted root to another they stepped cautiously. The muggers slipped into the water and sank slowly, their unblinking eyes staring upward, bubbles breaking where they sank. The stench of rotting vegetation and nauseating crocodile odor was thick and heavy. Then as Dineen peered up and down the dark stream be caught sight of a neat moderu powerboat on the opposite side, moored to a tree. From where it lay, a trail had been hacked into the farther jnagle. Small monkeys chattered and fed with sudden cries, a sign that orany-outangs were coming. At the sound of distant branches swish- ing, Dineen turned to retrace his way to solid ground. Inbam was younger and more agile and he left Dincen behind. Creepers cut off Dineen’s sight of the native, when suddenly a great ape dropped and confronted the white man. It stood erect, horribly huge and menacing. Dineen tried to shoot, but as he swung the gun to his shoulder it was wrenched from his grasp by a second orang-outang which hung by its paws from an overhead tree branch. Tis blood seemed to congeal in his flesh. as the big ape came nearer, mouthing uncouth sounds that even in his terror Dineen could not refuse to understand. “Dineen, ye don't know me,” it said mournfully. “Ye don’t know Rourke, an’ I don’t blame ye. Ye couldn’t believe it’s me in this awful shape. But it’s true, Dineen. Its Rourke’s brain in the head of an ape. That’s what the Chinks did to me. Omar Sung Loo’s Chink surgeons played their hellish tricks on me an’ my trapper, jist because I stole that tiger dust o’ his. God! what a price fer a man to pay.” Dineen felt his senses whirling, his legs wobbling, The stench of the crocodile swamp filled his throat anc nostrils and vertigo clamped 90 comichbooks.com