Avon Fantasy Reader No. 12 — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

va hill. With a fresh burst of speed he hurried on, then halted. Against ® the little flames he saw the grotesque figures of the two ape-men. | He would not risk being their prisoner again, and he circled cau- » tiously along a hill slope to a on from which he could look down. |. And the fear and repulsion of the unnatural beasts left him as he gazed upon their work. There was a hole scooped from the earth, and in it lay the body of the she-ape with the ivory and ebony crucifix stolen from his camp hut, on her breast. Around the grave stood his stolen candles, their flames wavering in the soft night breeze. Beside the grave the ape-man Tabak sat crooning that Malay pantun, the love song roared in the night. Dineen remembered that it was the same song he had heard Rourke’s native wile singing to the accom- paniment of bell-gongs as he went up the path to her bungalow. The | voice of Rourke, mourpfully unaware of its volume, came to him sorrowlully: “Corpse-candlcs don't mean much to her, Tabak, but maybe it'll help her soul find its way home. God help me! 1 wonder if this | purgatory I'm goin’ through will be enough fer me to find heaven.” i The cool night breeze was clearing Dineen’s bead of the drugs he had imbibed in the keapong tood. tle rementbered all that had hap- ‘pened, and even belicved it now! Yet cxliaustion forced him to he ‘and sleep on the rocky bill. The leeches which had bied him freely . by day dropped from his flesh at niglt. A feeling of fatalism dulled ~ further fear. He was roused from sleep by a touch on his arm, and the sight of the ape squatting near bim was no longer frighteumng. “Dineen, Vl be takin’ ye to yer camp. Go out with your men. 'There’s nothing you can do for me except kill ine, unless maybe you'd see my wife an’ tell her to go back to her people aw forget ne. There's nothing for her to forsive. Wo wars happy while it lasted.” Dincen was carried swifly, not caring where, and dropped au the opening of the hill crevasse into the valley, high exough to look down on his own cainp. ; “Put him there, Tabak,” said the other ape, who carricd the gin that had been snatchel fron: Dincen when lhe met them at the river. © “Dineen, when ye yet out say a prayer fer the soul o° Tom Rourke. He's had hell Coough alive. Phere can’t be worse hell where he’s goin.” The rumbling voice held tragic sorrow and despur. Dincen plunged down the trail. The sound of a shot startled him and he looked back. On the rock ledge one ape wrilhed in death agony a moment, then limply its body fell from the ledge. Dineen heard it crash in the bushes. Then the other ape squatted and braced the gun between its tect and placed the muzzle between its open jaws. Its hand reached daw the gun-barrel to find the trigger. There was a second report. Aa tuvet mass of hair-covered body slumped from sight. Dincen ran on. 3 my comicbooks.com ‘ANG ‘