Nyoka the Jungle Girl #50

Nyoka ventures into an unmapped section of the Indian jungle to photograph rare flowers when she stumbles upon a village in the grip of a cruel maharajah—a despot who forces storytellers to entertain him endlessly or face execution. After rescuing a condemned man named Sandhi from the maharajah's executioners, Nyoka is captured herself and forced to take Sandhi's place, spinning tales to stay alive while she waits for her companion Larry to mount a rescue. Now Nyoka must keep the maharajah captivated with stories, even as Sandhi races through the perilous jungle to bring help before her luck—and her imagination—run out.

Nyoka must keep a tyrannical Maharajah entertained with endless stories to stay alive, but when a crucial message fails to reach her ally Larry, her only hope of rescue vanishes—and her captor devises a deadly punishment to make an example of her. With flames creeping closer and escape seemingly impossible, this jungle girl must find a way out before the fire consumes her.

Egbert the Explorer guides a hunter named Hawley on a trip to Alaska, but Hawley's constant questions threaten to drive him crazy—so Egbert tries a clever joke to get him to stop asking so much. What starts as a simple pun about his past work in sales takes a surprising twist that leaves everyone laughing.

Trader Tom tries to pull a fast one on a customer named Blakely by selling him a suspiciously tiny twenty-cent loaf of bread, but Blakely turns the tables with some quick-witted logic of his own. This one-page humor tale from 1950 delivers a satisfying comeuppance with a smile.

When a desperate hunter named James Hudson turns up at Nyoka's door with an incredible tale of discovering a hidden gold mine and a guide bent on murder, he entrusts the jungle girl with both his life's map and a promise to get him safely aboard a ship by morning. But when Nyoka returns with his ticket, she finds Hudson dead—and herself the next target of a killer determined to seize the map. Can Nyoka unravel the mystery of the jungle gold mine murder before she becomes the second victim?

Nyoka races to recover a map to a jungle gold mine after being knocked unconscious by a killer, only to have it stolen again from its hiding place in a stuffed owl's eye. Determined to keep her promise to the map's original owner and catch the murderer, she narrows her suspects down to two hotel guests and sets a trap to flush out the guilty party—but her pursuit into the jungle takes a dangerous turn when the killer gets the upper hand. This second installment of "The Jungle Gold Mine Murder" builds the tension as Nyoka closes in on her quarry, though danger lurks at every turn.

Ballyhoo Barney gets the boot from the circus—and decides to sabotage every act in revenge, but his own schemes backfire spectacularly, landing him in situations far worse than unemployment. When the circus owner witnesses Barney's accidental aerial stunt work, he sees dollar signs instead of damage, and forces the hapless schemer into performing the very dangerous tricks he tried to wreck. A humorous reminder that payback rarely works out the way you plan.