Adventure Magazine Cover — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

Ps /; a Y, - ee z ‘ ‘*, ~ % ry —_— And duller should I lie than some fat weed That rolls itself at ease on Lethe’s wharf. HE effect of the fireflies, dancing over the oilily sliding waters and in and out between the stately Phoenix palms along the river-bank, was really very pretty. So was the soft and cease- less concert—Nature’s little ‘‘jazz’’—of bull- frogs, crickets, mosquitoes, cicadas, nightjars— *Hoo-hoo!” and “Chrrrrrr!’’—and all the rest. But these only accentuated and did not in any way break the awe-inspiring vastness, mystery, drear, utter, empty lonelineess of the immemo- rial wilderness night. Things came and went in the dark. You could hear them—live things that breathed, that rustled, that crept, that crawled, that whispered, that snarled, snorted, sniffed, or— yes—sneezed at long and lonely intervals. Nothing could be seen in the empty murk; far too much could be imagined. One felt that the “lord of creation” had no place there —if indeed he dare remain—except in the trees that he had originally come down from. It was a crushing and a humiliating night. Then the match spluttered—yea, verily, there even in that scene that was as old as Time—the little light flickered in the great darkness, the tinder-dry grass caught, the sticks followed, and —the camp-fire flared up. The red flames leaped and danced, and there were the jumping shadows of men going about tethering donkeys and a mule, and putting up | the tent-poles. But before ever mallet smote on tent-peg all the donkeys and the one mule stiffened together, and a voice as of thunder shattered the brooding stillness of the night. There was no warning, nothing. Nothing, my friends, but that single roaring, half grunt half bellow, crashing over the waters, and the dark- ness that lived there. It was followed by five shorter roaring grunts, and by silence, deeper in comparison than any that had gone before. And in the silence, all, mad = VFO Makaw* — Y F.sSt.Mars holding their breath, could distinctly hear a cavernous suck and gtrgle of waters, and the squelching deliberate tread of some mighty feet up the river-bank. Deliberately It approached—you could feel the very ground vibrate under the footfall—a dim, immense mass growing out of the mysteri- ous gloom. Then followed the vicious stab and flash, and clap of arifle. And then, and then— help!—once more that roaring grunt deafening all; an immense thudding that rocked the earth; a rush, and blast of air, as something tremen- dous, formless and growing, fairly rocketed past, a nightmare of confusion; and—darkness! Darkness, I say; utter, absolute and complete dark. The fire was out—had been put out by It, whatever it was—trodden, trampled, scat- tered, exterminated. At least there were only a few trails of sparks left, and they died. It was as if a steam-roller had charged the camp, and about as cheap. “Tt” was an enormous old bull hippopotamus, who reckoned he owned that river reach, and to him all fires were, strangely enough, anathema. : Then, still grunting in tones that shook the breathless dark, he turned and stumped his ponderous way back to the river again. The fire was out. Enough. Slowly his rage sim- mered down. His mighty mind was appeased. Now Ol Makaw, or Kibojo, or Mocow, or Jir, Gno, or Kroki, or Mouba according to the various native tribal tongues, or Hippopotamus amphibius, according to Science, or just plain “hippo” according to every-day folk, was well over thirteen feet long, five foot three inches tall, about thirty inches round the biceps, and boasted an armament of one pair of seventeen- inch tusks six inches round, and one pair of eleven-inch tusks five inches in girth, to say nothing of teeth to match. His body was the shape of a fat sausage, his funny short legs like tree-stumps, and his weight four tons, no less. But that was not all. Pig’s eyes he had, little pig ears, and a perfectly appalling mouth like a *This is an Off-the-Trail story. See second contents page. 82 Go .TOO