Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 206: what you’re looking at

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

204 literated, and the place was only the more stuffed with avalanched earth and over- grown with lush. We built shelters against the rain and started to work. We cleared off the lush. We were quite fifteen feet in, bolstering up _the roof as we went along with stout dilian stakes and heavy bark when, one day, that roof caved in, killing three of the boys. The rest of the crew would not work there after that. They said that the Green, Green God of the Poonan did not countenance such work and so was invoking evil upon them. Much against my will I had to come out. My money was gone then, but I did not give up. I borrowed some more money from a rich Chinese toko-keeper of Banjer- masin with whom I formerly had traded, and used that money to outfit another ex- pedition. But when, some months later, we got to the volcano of the Jallan Batoe, I could not find the spot where that tunnel had been. It appeared that, what with tropical storms and the tremendous fecundity of the jungle, that spot where the tunnel had en had so changed its physical appear- ance and become so overwhelmed by trees and lush-growths, since I last had been there, that there was now no way to dif- ferentiate it from the physical appearance and trees and lush-growths of the rest of the jungled slope. _ Nothing daunted, however, we tried to climb the steep, sheer barren cliffs of the crater. But above the forest line the vol- cano slope was lava—lava cliffs straight up and down, lava cliffs smooth as glass. To climb those cliffs was utterly impossible. . Once more I was forced to come out. But I did not go back to orchid-hunting. I wanted to forget. I wanted to go away from the jungle with its rich, warm colors and its rustling little sounds that forever re- minded me of the Jallan Batoe and of my Golden Feather of Flame. I wanted to go away from Borneo, to go away from every- thing that whispered to me of the old sweet life—those tremulous moments of love, lost forever, never to be regained. Now every two years or so I make enough on the shell-and-pea game to go back and make another forlorn try. Between tries, I wander the world, striving to forget. I walk the beaches. I am only another broken man of the Sea Islands, reduced toa Adventure vagabond’s straits and shifts, bedding down wherever the dark comes upon me. But in the crimson dawns and in the golden sunsets there is ever a voice calling to me—calling, calling, calling—callng always to me to come back to her, my own Golden Feather of Flame. CHAPTER XXXI IN WHICH EVERYTHING ENDS IN THE FO’= C’s’LE, WHEN WE LEARN THE REASON FOR MOGUL, THE PARROT Fy PE ceased speaking and, his red- bearded face transfigured with an ex- pectant, ecstatic look, stared across the fo’c’s’le, stared past me with unseeing eyes, as if he heard, indeed, his beautiful lost bride calling to him from beyond the years and from beyond the long leagues of sea. And then, suddenly and sharply and wholly unexpectedly, from the bunk behind me as I, Colum Kildare, sat facing Hyde, a voice said: “But what happened to her? Where is she now, your Golden Feather of Flame?” It was the voice of Fitzhamon—the shaken, the overwrought voice of Fitzha- mon. He had been wide awake and listen- ing for a long time, it seemed. And he leaned now far out of the bunk behind me, his body upraised on his arm, his bandaged curl-crop of head craning forward over my right shoulder, and his gray somber eyes on Hyde. I looked over at the great bulk and red head that was William Hyde. He had slumped all together in a heap, so that he seemed not half so huge nor so columnar. And morosely his head was lowered upon his hands. But of a sudden he raised his head and showed a face to us that was the lined, careworn face of one damned to bit- terness and to despair. And he looked steadily at us with terrible eyes, and he whispered: “Aye, where is she now, my Golden Feather of Flame! Where is she now, while I wander the world and have only the mem- ories of my beautiful loved one, and of my triumph and my downfall? Is she dead, my beautiful Belun-Mea Poa-Poa—dead, or a | slave to the Poonan? “T do not know. I only know that she ran right back into the arms of those Poo- -nan; and I know, full well, that she was sac- rificing herself for me trying to run back — GEomichbooks (G(e)