Adventure Magazine Cover — page 59: what you’re looking at

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

In Kathir Kraats the terrific hardship and suffering that life imposes on all native children. He had thriven on it, for even as he sat there by. the fire one could see how sturdy and well formed he was. The dancing flames of the fire brought out the healthy sparkle of his eyes as he brought his knees up and rested his chin on top of them and rubbed his hands up and down his shins as they were comfortably being toasted by the early African fire, for it was cold outside, it being the early Fall which meant Winter. Winter meant rain, and that meant deluge, for in Africa there is no snow, except on the high mountain-tops many thousand feet in the air. Rarely does the flutter of those wonderful feathery flakes fall. About once in a decade does it happen, but it makes a lasting impression on these children of the tropics as well as others in temperate climes. The high altitude combined with the change of weather leaves the surrounding atmosphere just a little above the freezing point. So the stories continue and the boys “‘pop”’ corn in the three-legged iron vessel. It is minus two legs and sits rather lopsided on the fire supported by astone or two. Upina remains in his brown study, as it were, wondering about the morrow and the other morrows to be, for now he is not a nkwe nkwana (small boy) but a real nkwenkwe (boy) and of the gumele yama grest (cattle- herders)—a rank to which every real native boy aspires. Some one in the assembled crowd flicks a bit of hot coal at Upina. He comes to life with a bound with his hand on that part of his anatomy which has been touched by the coal. He wants to know who shot at him. He accuses a certain one of the group who is given to practical joking—a denial, words, hot words, one push, two pushes, forehead against forehead, they argue into one another’s mouths, not hearing or know- ing what the other is saying. Their particular companions and _ ad- mirers urge them on. The foreheads slip and both noses hit strong young shoulders, they grab hold of each other and sway this way and that, their excited companions get up and jump up and down in glee. Imaginations get heated and so does action too, and instead of a single encounter be- tween two the whole thing becomes general. There is one, however, who does not take part in this hilarious and uproarious 49 noise making and giving off of young energy, for that’s what it really amounts to, but slyly and quickly with both fists full, eats up the pot full of corn. A form opens the lower half of the door and enters un- noticed inside the hut. It thunders— “Pezanil” They cease as if by magic! An instant’s silence, and the voice commands them— “Lala nt makwedini,”’ A chorus of voices answer— “Ewe—buut.”’ The form goes out and the boys prepare their mats and hides to sleep. Ten minutes later and they are snoring. yy morning was cold, dark and chilly 4 because of the heavy dew that had come Soo during the night. An umfana emerged from one of the huts and strode quickly to the hut where the younger boys were, with a wicked-looking umlezo switch in his right hand. His left held his bayz wrapped tightly around his person. He stepped into the hut and laid his switch on the sleeping forms with vigor and force. Sweesh! As the switch came down on four sleeping forms. The forms under the sleeping hide knocked straight against each other. The hides rose and fell like the waves on an angry sea. Sweesh! The second time and several naked brown boys leaped to their feet and ran _ blindly, stumbling this way and that way in the <| THE sun had not risen yet and the dark hut. Sweesh here, sweesh_ there! Sweesh! Sweesh! Sweesh! Everywhere! “Vukan! Nyana mbigasna. Get up, you good for nothing milk of sheep.’’* “Pumanil Neow vulela ama tole. out and let the calves out.” The hut was now filled with the bellowing of young voices. The boys fell over each other in their mad scramble to get out of reach of that wicked wmlezo. They streamed out of the door. Some racing like mad went to let the calves out in their small enclosure; others leaped at the kalabaas hung high on palings after the night before milking. Three boys opened the rude sibayz gate: the calves came on a scrambling gallop, jammed at the gate, were kicked and beaten in; the cows awaited their calves with distended noses and legs spread out, and not until the * The natives do not drink sheep's milk. Get Conn Ghooks co iin