Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

ee Caw c by Poiwbice Grimshaca Beatrice Grimshaw is one of those gifted writers who can bring the glamour, beauty, and mystery of the South Seas into the hearts of every reader. In these days when so many Americans remember the South Seas only as a scene of battle, as an uncomfortable place for a homesick G.I. to be, it is good to hark back to those more pacific days when the true color of the Islands could be appreciated at leisure. Among Miss Grimshaw’s many colorful tales, there are some which reflect the haunting mystery of those lonely places. In “The Cave” we venture to say there has been introduced what may be the largest spectre ever described. And a very small island is cer- tainly no place to share with a very large ghost! VER Rafferty’s Luck—misnamed—the wind seemed always blowing. Perhaps it did not really blow as much as I imagined. Perhaps, for the first time in my life, I merely had leisure to observe such things, and to be | impressed by them. 3 : To see how the long grasses shivered, showing the footmarks of the wind, as it strode over them like Peter striding on the sea; as it suddenly failed and sank—like Peter—leaving behind it a flurry of stirred leaflets that made you think of flaws on water. . . . How, in the tide of the grass, always rising higher against the few doomed buildings, there streamed and wavered, like wonderful seaweeds, long strands of bishop-purple bougainvillea, and allaman- da, all gold—wreckage of the creepers that used to climb over the roof and wall. How a loose door, in office, or bungalow, would suddenly give itself to the wind, and shut with a thunderous noise, making one think, for a distracted moment, that somebody had returned. .. . Nobody did. It had not been anticipated that anyone would, when the own- ers of the bankrupt mine had hired me to stay there. I was to hold the place by doing a little work, while they went afield looking for capital—which they hardly expected to get. There was just enough chance of it, however, to make it worth their while to send me to the island, and leave me there at a negligible salary, with six-months’ stores, and the freedom of the whole place, on which there was not so much as a native or a dog. Only myself and the deserted shaft and the rotting bungalow, and the wind that blew continually, com- : 13 : | (E(0) mM : "comi el eyo KS