Adventure Magazine Cover — page 102: what you’re looking at

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

96 Kos had already untied the second son- tete that was inside the kraal. This one hardly touched the ground before it joy- ously joined its companion in slaughtering the three pythons. Kos raced like mad to the gate and out to untie the other birds. They were almost pulling their legs off as he untied each one; for above the roars of the fires and the shouts of the excited natives they could distinguish the crawl of the master-snake, and they lived only to exterminate the whole tribe of belly-crawling reptiles. As the dozen or so reptiles oozed éireubh the kraal fence they were met with loud squawks overhead which they recognized as those of their relentless enemies, the sontete, and with the speed of the American blue racer snake these reptiles sought to escape from the winged death. The birds jumped on the backs of four, broke them and with more squawks turned and took the air in seventy-five of those long, lazy strides, skimmed it for a while and crashed on the heads of other luckless reptiles. They danced up and down on them until the heads were in shreds. The other pythons were in a panic. One in sheer blind fright shot headlong into one of the roaring bonfires. Next instant it came out, its blue scales in shreds, with white meat showing in patches. Its eyes were burned white, and it was blind. It rolled about for a little while and then lay still, the after-part of its body lashing madly from‘ side 'to‘side. A sontete came up, picked it up with its beak and tried to run with it, but could only move it. It dropped the body but danced on the whole length of the reptile until it lashed about no more. Stalking about, the birds came upon the pythons with the broken backs. Desper- ately these reptiles sought to frighten the birds away by opening their mouths and hissing out of their throats. Their lower jaws were broken in two as those sharp clawed feet crashed on them; the birds bit and clawed at them until three were dead. The fourth one would not give up so easily, so three or four of the birds picked it up in their beaks, ran a score of feet or so, and took the air with the python twisting this way and that way in their beaks. They flew above the blazing fires, out of range of the heat. A few seconds later a crushing sound and a shower of sparks from one of Adventure the fires, and that was the end of that milk- ing python. The fires sank lower and lower, and when morning came they were mere heaps of white-hot ash with badly mangled snakes beside and around them. Kos was hailed as a great witch-doctor, and his fame spread not only in his own tribe but to many others; and so it was not very long before ‘he was in communication with other power- ful witch-doctors, and at the occasional secret meetings that this craft had he was able to learn quite a few new tricks, some of which he improved upon. As to his power of prophecy, he became master of this because he cultivated the company of the half-dozen or so men wh6 were the tribe’s historic encyclopedias. He asked them such questions as: What kind of weather did they have before a certain event? How did the people feel and seem after a great battle had been fought and won by their own impis? Didit help aman to be married? From their varied answers he came to his own conclusions, one of them being to remain single. As to the python incident just related, the explanation might be made that Kos, after having seen the cows that had been milked dry every night before morning, had observed. that the hair forward from the rump for a distance of ten inches was flat with tufts standing up in an almost mathe- matical circle, going all the way round the cows very much like a thread on a machine nut. The same thing occurred with the cat- tle’s legs. Next were the holes in the cattle stockade palings and in the thorn fence surrounding the kraal. The last may have been made by the flock of native chickens taking a dust bath; but anyway the palings were worn smooth in between and inside the stockade had that sickly, oily smell that comes from the snake that feeds on milk. The withes were worn smooth, and at the top where the cattle’s horns never reached at any time there were a dozen or more places where the lumber was worn smooth and even crotched where the pythons had turned their tails in that vise-like grip that gives power to their bodies; for be it known that a python is al- most—please note, almost—powerless on the ground and is really powerful only when hanging to something by at twenty-three inch end of his tail. And that is how Kc came to the GomiGchdoo S (C@)