Avon Fantasy Reader No. 14 — page 46: what you’re looking at

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

been watching the road for three days, Cheese and mysteries are great things to attract Dutch naturalists. Tell me, Kromhout, why you people put car- away seeds in your checse?’ “*To make fools ask the reason,’ I snapped. ‘Where is your old atmosphere that you were bragging about?’ “*You must not approach it in that spirit,’ said Hyin. ‘You see, there are reasons. [ am not the owner or the real discoverer. I will introduce you, but if you please, try to look as if you believed, even if you lack the imagination to see beyond your nose.” “T was annoyed, but I had come to see what 1 could see, so I followed Ilyin through the jungle till we came to a thatched hut. In the hut were an old man and a girl of about eighteen. First I will tell of the man. He was a Sun- danese; and when I saw him, he was what is called /atah. His eyes were glazed and his nostrils distended. I did not like the look of him. “The gitl—4ch! the girl was something that the gods of the jungle had made to peep at. She was just meeting womanhood. Her skin was of beaten gold, and all the dreams of the world were in her big frightened eyes. Eyes like the little musk deer that spoke to you, saying, ‘Do not harm me; I am nice and innocent and I will be good.’ /a, they were wonderful eyes. And she had little teeth so white and beautiful that you wished that she could get an- noyed and bite you with them. And she was dressed as she should be dressed. She had a six-foot strip of scarlet silk wound tightly around her waist, then thrown loosely across her bosom and over one of her shoulders. Sometimes that sash slipped {rom her shoulder, or maybe the little devils of the jungle pulled it away. In her left nostril she had a small ruby that winked at you as much as to say: ‘Wouldn’t you like my job?’ “lyin spoke to the Sundanese, but that fellow was in dreamland and did not hear. The girl answered for him. She said we could not visit the temple that day. The man was lutah; I would have to wait. That Russian tried to bully her, but she would not give way, although she was afraid of Ulyin, who was big and strong and did not think much of women. When that scarlet sash slipped from the girl’s shoulder, Ilyin would grin like a tiger that meets a young antelope. “Dutchman, you must stick around,’ he said. ‘It will be worth it. You will know things after you have seen what I have seen.’ “For three days we waited. And we argued a lot. When I spoke of Hanne’s ‘Handbuch der Klimatologie’ or Woeikof’s ‘Die Klimate der Erde,’ that Rus- sian would laugh at me. ‘All the fellows that have written about climate and atmosphere write of them in relation to health and industry and crops,’ he said. ‘Not one of the idiots writes about the relation of climate to the soul. They tell how altitude affects the circulation and respiration of the body, and how winds are bad for persons with certain complaints, but they say nothing of the effect of places on the vital principle, on the spirit. Look at this place! Wouldn't the atmosphere of this spot transform a man? Wouldn’t it get into his blood?’ “ “If the damned leeches left him any blood!’ I snapped. There was a strange quality around that place, but I would not let that Russian bully me. There is 44 comiclsooks.com