Adventure Magazine Cover — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

102 But the fisherman’s pride at having brought to shore a nine-pound choupique with nothing but a silk trout-line overcame Pierre’s chagrin. Using his open clasp knife as a gaff, he lifted the big choupique, kick- ing and flopping, from the water, extracted the wooden minnow, and kicked the fish back into the pool. ‘“‘There, durn you—and I hope you get stranded on a mud-bar,” he grumbled. ‘‘And that spoils the fishing here, because the rumpus has scared all the trout ’way beyond the city limits by this time. Now T’ll just naturally have to get back to the pirogue and hunt a better ‘ole.’ ”’ Picking up his rod and his two trout he made his way carefully back along the edge . of the pool. There was need for care, for the leaves of the rank marsh-grasses were razor-keen and it would not do to plunge recklessly through the tangled brakes. Pierre completed the circuit without haste. Then he looked blankly at the place where he had left the pirogue. The im- press of the dugout on the sedge where it had been beached was plainly visible. There could be no mistake about that. But the pirogue was gone. eae AT FIRST Pierre Laroche did not Sing take his predicament too seriously. He realized that the pirogue had been stolen, and knew that he would have to make his way back to his car afoot as best he might, of course. But he had no fear of losing himself as he need only follow the three waterways by which he had come—the present ditch, the broad canal, and the ditch in which his pirogue had been concealed. The bread canal he would have to swim, but if he took his time and proceeded with becoming care he could make the entire trip without being very much the worse for wear at the end of it. And so he started, discarding his rod and his two trout regretfully, and carefully cacheing the former. Picking his way cautiously and avoiding the patches of keen- bladed grass and cane, he stuck to the ditch and to the banks of the pools which formed part of its course, making slow progress but husbanding his resources. Yet with all his caution he did not alto- gether escape injury. Three crimson slashes across his face showed where the sharp blades he encountered in the brakes had cut home once when an incautious, stumbling step Adventure had sent him pitching headlong forward. He had lost his cap, and his hair was plastered down in wet, ropy locks. But what bothered him most was the all but intolerable smarting of his eyes, into the corners of which the heavy salt beads of sweat kept trickling. To remedy this he knelt by the bank of the ditch to give him- self the refreshment of a wash. When he arose it was with a cry of alarm. Descending above him was a dense cisud of mosquitoes. The sight drove from him all need for holding his strength in reserve— all need for caution—all need for sticking close by the banks of the ditches along which he had come. Crossing his arms before his face to shield himself as best he might, he plunged headlong into the swamp. On he crashed through the brakes, losing all sense of direction, until a fallen branch tripped him and flung him full down upon the quaking ground. There he lay sobbing with exhaustion until he had in some degree recovered his breath. When he arose he did so unsteadily, while an intense irritation throughout his body told him something of the number of mosquito bites he must have suffered. He ran his finger-tips tenderly over his features and could feel the lumpy irregularities which told him that his face must be puffed and swollen beyond all recognition. His forearms, cut and bleeding until-they seemed all but raw, caught his eyes, and he tried to smile; but he could manage no more than a wry grimace, due to the stiffness in his swollen cheeks. He was very much alive to the necessity for getting out of the swamp with all possible speed, for it would not be long now until the fever induced by the mosquito poison should begin in earnest, and to be caught in the swamp by a fever would hold him there until nightfall meant death. There was left to him no sense of location. He had lost all that in his mad flight from the mosquitoes. But he knew that sooner or later he would cross a pirogue ditch, and somewhere or other along this ditch there would be a human habitation. Sway- ‘ing and lurching dizzily, Pierre Laroche set out across the swamp. et BOTH sides of Bayou Sauvage pyle) were deeply shaded by overhanging #43 branches, for the sun stood nearly overhead. Along the center of the black water, thrown into sharp relief by the COMicaoo® S C@