Bill Barnes Air Adventurer, July 1935 — page 82: what you’re looking at

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

80 BILL BARNES a while,’ Bill answered. ‘Some one has to stay with the planes.” Sandy fell into an abused and elo- quent silence. But he didn’t say any- thing more. He knew now that he had disobeyed orders and that he was being punished for it. He sat back in the pilot’s seat of the transport a few minutes later and watched the rest of Bill’s men disap- pear with him into the thick bush along the rim of the plateau. They all car- ried rifles and automatic pistols. ‘They say they’ll be back in an hour,” he grumbled. “They’ll probably never come back.” HE SAT listening to the awful still- ness of the place for a matter of thirty minutes. Then he went down the steps to the guest cabin in the tail. From a duffel bag he extracted the pot-bellied, death’s head dummy with which he had been. practicing ventriloquism before he left Barnes Field. He grinned and car- ried the thing up to the bridge. He sat down in the pilot’s seat again and slipped his fingers into the ends of the strings that manipulated the dummy’s head, hands and legs. Then he began to talk to it? And it to him. He forgot that he was on the island of Madagascar, twelve thousand miles from home. He forgot about every- thing but the dummy and their conversa- tion. Sometimes he threw back his head and howled with laughter. Another time it was the dummy that did the same thing. Then suddenly, he became aware of movement around the transport. He listened for a moment and heard the unmistakable sound of moving men. He got to his feet and edged cautiously to- ward the window, his hand wrapped around the butt of the automatic strapped to his side. Seeing nothing he went cautiously down the steps to the forward gunner’s compartment in the nose. Looking down through the glass in the bottom he saw a half dozen mus- cular, gleaming-black bodies beneath the fuselage. They carried long primitive spears in their hands and were naked except for the lambas wrapped around their waists. Sandy ducked quickly out of sight and hurried noiselessly back up the steps. He stood on the bridge uncertain as to what he ought to do. Perhaps they meant to burn the transport. The thought sent him hurrying down the runway beside the Eaglet at the entrance door on the port side. Opening it cau- tiously he saw another group of natives clustered around the Snorter. . They were not molesting it. Merely squatting beside it and watching it with intense interest. He stuck the head of the dummy around the corner of the doorway and began to talk to it. The dummy an- swered him with bobbing head and ges- ticulating hands and feet. The natives underneath the transport and beside the Snorter gazed at the thing with wide, fear-crazed eyes. They didn’t attempt to run away. They stayed where they were, rooted in their tracks. Sandy made the dummy, by means of the strings attached to it, throw back its head, open its mouth and give voice to full-throated shouts and laughter. He kept up a fast-moving conversation that made no sense whatsoever. It was when he was beginning to grow hoarse and weak from talking and throwing his voice that a shot sounded from the bush, and Bill and his men came charging across the short, tough grass toward him. The natives threw down their spears -and fell on their faces as they ap- proached, emptying their guns into the ate, Sandy went down the folding gang- way to the ground with the dummy still in his hand. The natives gazed at him CB—5 oO COMmicloo S CO