Adventure Magazine Cover — page 54: what you’re looking at

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

48 He wondered if it might be one of Thusby’s men, who had escaped alive and sought to save the stranger from the wild hillmen. A hand closed over Wheaton’s mouth. At first he thought that he was to be seized, but in a minute he understood that the hand was intended to prevent him from crying out. Then above him, seen in the faint flickers of light through the thicket, . Wheaton saw the head and shoulders of the big native—the man with the turban and the bark shield on his breast. The hand was removed from his mouth, and Wheaton was lifted to a sitting position, and a length of bamboo full of water was held to his lips. He sucked up the water to the last drop, and once more a hand was clapped over his mouth to prevent him from uttering any sound. Soon the big native pulled Wheaton carefully under the house, and, pressing upward with his shoulders, lifted some of the flooring, which was probably loosely laid down upon the bamboo floor-beams. Working carefully, the big fellow hove Wheaton upward and laid him on the floor inside and covered him with mats. Whea- ton felt his hand squeezed, as in a silent signal to remain still, and the native left him. Shortly afterward there was a wild yell outside—some one had discovered that the white prisoner was missing! There was a clamor of voices, and the natives dashed away into the jungle, answering the call of some man who seemed to be directing the way in which the pursuit should be made. The voices of the men in the jungle became fainter in the hillsides above the village, but Wheaton could hear them beat- ing the bush for him. As he lay almost smothering under the pile of mats, he won- dered how long it would be before he would be found. And he could not understand why he had not been freed, if the big native intended that the white prisoner was to escape death. He felt the house vibrate as some one came up the ladder. The flooring snapped under the weight of an intruder. He thought that some one who had remained in the village had come blundering in, and might discover him. But the mats moved cautiously. Once more a hand was put on his mouth and held for a second, and Wheaton knew that the native who had hidden him had returned. Adventure He was breathing heavily, and the butter- fly hunter suspected that this fellow had been the one to give the alarm that the white prisoner had escaped—and had led the chase in the hills to draw the warriors away on a false scent. Having uncovered Wheaton, the native now cut the thongs which bound the pris- oner, and Wheaton sat up. He bumped his head on something that bounced away, and swung back in the darkness and rattled against him. It was dark in this upper chamber of the house, but presently the native crawled to the front of the shack and pulled inward a lattice window which hung under the gable. The light from the fires in the village flooded the interior of the place, and Whea- ton saw what he took to be a lot of baskets hanging from the rafters by single strips of rattan—each basket on a single length. He pushed one of these aside, for it cut off his view of the village, and his hand sank in a soft, fuzzy substance. It was hair! And he knew that he was inside the tribe’s headhouse! Wheaton suffered a chill, and the scalp on the back of his head had a curling, craw- ling sensation. Against the light of the fires in the village he could see the native crouched inside the window, just under the dozens of black, bulbous heads swinging gently in the soft breeze that floated in through the opening. The cords which held the ghastly relics were put through the tops of the skulls, and held inside by tog- gles. And there was a nerve-racking rattle as the heads moved. The butterfly-hunter remembered now someof the things that Thusby had said to him,and he remembered poor Thusby fight- ing for his life against a swarm of warriors— and losing! And he was conscious of some vague, mental reckoning of the value of Thusby’s life, and the lives of his four men, in comparison with these men of the jungle —the natives who Wheaton himself had insisted were simple, and gentle, and child- like. Thusby had known them for what they were, reflected Wheaton, and now he knew them also. But this headhouse was no place for smiles. The native in the window listened to the distant calling of the parties seeking in the jungle for the white man. Ina few minutes Wheaton saw the black come crawling back CORMICLOO© S (C@