Avon Fantasy Reader No. 12 — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

its claws in his vitals. He tried to leap to the next tree-root and his legs were paralyzed like a man in a nightmare trying to escape from | demons. He stumbled and fell across a mangrove root with his legs in the stinking ooze. The giant ape came nearer, a paw reached for him. He was lifted - close to that terrible face. Then he knew nothing more until his eyes opened on a leafy canopy of cool shade and cleaner wind. It was some minutes before he saw the great apes crouching near him and realized that he lay on a platform of bamboo crudely lashed to branches high in the trees, which swayed gently as the apes moved and shifted their weight. “Dineen,” came the rasping and thick sounds from a tongue that was slowly accustomin itself to human speech, “It’s Rourke talkin’. God! I don’t blame ye im doubtin’ what I say. But listen to what I’m _ sayin’ an’ try to understand, Here, take a swig o’ this coconut milk.” - He whanged a nut on the tree branch and broke the shell. | Dincen’s throat was parched and he drank eagerly; then as his head lifted he dropped it again on his arm, hoping to Ged he dreamed the sight before him. Yet the voice went on relentlessly: “Dincen, I'm a sight to scare a man, I know, but listen, Omar Sung Loo’s Chink surgeons have a kampong near here an’ a nice little surgery. Tabak~that’s my trapper as was, though he’s an ape now same as Ll am—well, we walked into it innocent as babes. The Chinks was polite and give us food an’ drinks. They was both doped, Dineen. An’ them devils butchered us au’ put our brains into the heads of orang-outangs, They meant to ship us to Omar an’ sell us as freaks, but we broke away. Omar owed me a grudge, an’ you remember how he cursed me, He said he’d pay back, an’ he did.” It took time for the slow and labored uttcrance to be voiced. Dineen listencd helplessly, and something in that sorrowful wail penetrated past fear, which was his only sensation. “Ye can't believe,” mourned the ape, “but I'll show ye presently how true it is. My wife knows. I went there an’ told her I was in a devil land an’ could never come home to her again. I told her not to search for me. But I said if Omar Sung Loo came tiger-trapping in the jungles she might slip the word to the natives to let a tiger maul him to death. "Tis a poor revenge but ‘twill keep him from further hellishness. An’ Dineen, I want your help now. My man, Tabak—the unbaptized son of a slut!—stole a native girl an’ handed her down to the kampong fer this Chink surgeon to make him a sweetheart orang-outang. We stole her before the head wound healed, an’ she’s here on our tree-nest dyin’ by inches. You've some skill with wounds, Dineen. Look at her an’ see can ye do anything. I'd end it for her, only it’s so damned lonesome, an’ Tabak an’ me would fight. 91 comichbooks.com