Adventure, February 1917 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

~ 24 million—years ago. This is the Stone Age you’re in, and you feel lost in it, like a bad dream.” As if to point his words, a canoe came suddenly round the corner of an island and bore up on a course that crossed the bows of the launch. It was a large canoe, built up in several pieces; it had an oval mat sail, and was hung from stem to stern with strings of dangling snow-white shells as large as hens’ eggs. The prow was carved to rep- resent the head of some indescribable beast that was partly bird and partly serpent; the sides were ornamented with carving, scrolled __ and interlaced, and picked out in red, white and black. A crowd of natives squatted on the deck; they were naked, save for fragments of dried leaves; their heads were decked with white and scarlet flowers, their faces paint- ed in white and red stripes, with black cir- cles round the eyes, exceedingly fierce in appearance. They carried bundles of barb- ed spears, and one or two had stone clubs - with heads cut like a Crusader’s mace. Without a word or a sign they swept past, at a pace the launch could scarce have bettered; and when they were gone, round the lee of the next island, one would have sworn that they were the figment of a mere dream, so unreal did the silent, flying craft and her wild crew appear. “Are those cannibals?” asked the woman ‘n drawing-rooms, leaning over the rail to ook. “Cannibals? Would you mind handing me the rolled-up chart on the cabin table; I don’t want to take my hands off the wheel to sign to the boys. Oh, yes, I suppose so. They looked like Jamieson Islanders. Most of the groups about us have a good deal of cannibalism left, though of course the Gov- ernment has twisted their little tails for them, and they have to carry on more or less on the sly nowadays.”’ “And Nobody’s Island?” Slade laughed. “Oh, the natives there are quite quiet,” he assured her, “Ts it in sight?” “Why, we’re nearly there!’’ “Nearly there? That can’t be it!” “Why not?” Slade was down in the en-— gine-room now, doing something with wheels and levers, and a boy who seemed to know the course very well was steering the -launch, — Adventure “That’s only a sort of sandy reef. It isn’t an island.” Edith was looking at a long stretch of barren sand on one side of the launch, an endless beach, bare of anything but boul- ders, of which it seemed to have plenty. They were white boulders, and very strange- ly shaped; some of them looked like ship’s screws cast away, others like long curved beams, others like bits of giant fencing that had never been finished—all dead, glaring white in the glaring sun. Were they boul- ders? And if not, what on earth, or in the sea, were they? “You'll find it down on the chart all right,” said Slade, coming up and wiping his hands on a piece of waste. ‘“Only— with a chuckle—‘‘you’ll find it down wrong, like some other things in this country. The compilers of the original charts slipped up a bit here and there. And Nobody’s Island —which hasn’t any name—is down very much wrong indeed. Several miles, in fact. And being very low, you can’t see it several miles off. So, if you happened to set out to look for it—not knowing that fact—it would be exceedingly hard to find.” “‘And is it yours?” “Tt is not, and there’s the milk of the coconut. You can’t buy land at all under the present Government; you can only lease it for ninety-nine years or less. I bought Scratchley from a man who had had it for a good many years; he got it under a former Government. But nowadays they don’t sell, they let, and they won’t let islands any more, and if they do by any chance, they reserve two and a half chains all round the shore. Which wouldn’t do for me. And applying for the island anyhow wouldn’t do for me. Because people can come and help themselves if they know where things are, lease or no lease. And this is a bonanza, you take my word for it. - “Tf T hadn’t had Nobody’s Island to fall back upon, I might have been slower than I was about carrying you off a la Young Lochinvar. You’re the only living soul—I don’t count niggers; they haven’t as much soul as you could heap up on a threepenny piece—you’re the only soul I’ve told about it. Now come and see the secret!” THEY might have been children— they were, for the hour; children with a tremendous secret, shared by no one else. Edith’s blue eyes were as MICLOOOKS S| (c©) (C@©