Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 196: what you’re looking at

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

et We, aa ot Ce RAS OPIN SAO ae BY Ae 7 Ye ee “V5 A * is 5, A ii ae iv a eee sje ee tT Des > a on.) Bd 5s Ven Wi wee, xytthy Kee ~ ‘ ¥ ¥ b vi i ben Cee ole 194 “Don’t use your knife! Don’t move a step nearer! Don’t do anything, any——” - “But this is no knife!” I breathed ex- citedly. And as excitedly I tried to free my arm. “Don’t stop me, don’t stop me, my bride! You do not know. I will kill him! With one shot, I will kill him!” She released my arm, but only to clutch wildly at my shirt, at my shoulders. She clutched at me convulsively, as if in the agitation of sudden weakness. “T am afraid!” she breathed. “‘You can not kill him! No one can kill him! And I am afraid—I weaken—I am afraid of the Monster Man!” And her hands dropping Jimply from me, her golden head sagging forlornly, down to the ground at my feet she slipped. The gun slid back into my belt. A great fear upon me—fear for her and her alone— quickly I stooped above her. “Go back!” vibrated a voice in my ear. “T told you you were a fool. Now you know you are a fool. You can not return the Green, Green God. You can never return the Green, Green God. Go back. For never will the Green, Green God be returned to the Stone Dobo until the Poonan know, and rise up and kill you! I, the High Priest- ess of the Poonan, say that; and I but bide my time. Go back, you fool, for I spare you tonight.” But I paid no heed to that High Priestess; I paid no heed to that motionless Monster Man behind her. All I knew then was that Golden Feather of Flame was at my feet, had fainted dead away at my feet—my wife, my own, my beautiful and brave. I picked up her poor limp form. Upon Lip-Plak-T engga then and upon her hideous monstrosity, I turned my back. One edge of that rattan basket crushed between my teeth, my wife limp in my arms, on I went, straight up that avenue down which, but a few minutes before so hopefully we had come. 7 I stumbled into the Elephant Cave, my wife faintly stirring now in my arms. Stumbling over charred torches upon the floor I laid her gently upon the couch; and consciousness having come back to her fully now, she lay there, shivering and weeping with weakness and fear. “Another time!” she sobbed. ‘Only an- other time! We will bring back the Green, Green God tomorrow—tomorrow night!’’ Her words were brave words, but I hardly Adventure heard them. I was looking at the floor, looking fearfully at the floor. Four torches burned above my head in the sockets in the walls; I remembered having placed. those torches there, but I never remembered hav- ing thrown these other charred torches upon that floor. There were two, there were three; and one still smoked faintly, and one still glowed a dull red. Some one had been in the cave. Some one had been in the cave but a short time before. A subtle suspicion fired my brains. I leaped to one of the torches in the walls and that torch casting shaky shadows, dashed out into the dark corridor. In that corridor, in the pitchy bend, there was no silent black bundle with flashing eyes—no bound heap of bones and skin and hate—no Mohong Wook at all. The old Adjie, with all his knowledge of us, was gone. I knew then. The Poonan had come for old Mohong. They had cut his bonds, pulled that gag from his withered mouth. And the Poonan knew now. They knew, from old Mohong, that the Green, Greed God was -gone from the Dobo. They knew that we had the Green, Green God in our Elephant Cave. And they would come, now, for us. CHAPTER XXVIII WHEN THE POONAN ROSE Bu they did not come. The moments slipped into minutes, the minutes into hour-fractions, and the hour-fractions at last into the fullness of a whole hour of wait- ing. And they did not come. In the dark of that great cave-chamber— for I had beaten out the torches against the walls—we sat upon the couch, my wife and I, side by side. The rattan basket contain- ing the Green, Green God was in Belun-M ea Poa-Poa’s lap; the heavy .38 was held tightly in my right hand, its long barrel pointing toward that low doorway. Thus we waited. And we waited thus, because it was the only thing we could think of doing. We waited for the muffled tread of bare ‘feet in the grassy avenue, the soft flop of bare feet upon the stone stairs of the en- trances. It was a torture of waiting. The suspense was on us like thumb-screws. I wanted, dearly wanted, to cry: “Come on, you golden rats! I hear you out there! Come on, —— you, and finish us quick!’ : (E) in Gomuirebooks