Adventure Magazine Cover — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

12 : Wy PEDRO and I arose and stood si- We \ent beside Senhor Tom, dreading to tell him the truth. But we found that we need not tell him. His eyes were open, and as he listened to the noises and saw only blackness his face became like that of a dead man. He put a hand to his eyes, moved his head, and slowly let the hand fall. “Pedro! Lourenco!” he gasped. ‘We are here, comrade,” Pedro said gently. The hand came groping out, seeking us. I took it. ‘What time is-it?” “Daybreak,” I told him. His jaw set. His hand gripped mine as if he were falling over the edge of a gulf. Then slowly his face smoothed out, though his teeth stayed clenched. “So—I am blind,” he muttered. “Tt will pass away,” Pedro tried to com- fort him. ‘You were shot in the head, sen- hor. Your eyes were not touched. It may be a few days before you can——” “Tell me the truth!” he cut in, his voice turning hard. “Tell me all of it! I heard you working and whispering in the night. You lied to. me—I know it. Now come clean!” We told him all. : “Now we start to find that snake who bit you from behind,” I finished. ‘We shall make a small raft, pointed at the ends. Paddles are ready, and we shall cut poles also. First we shall look for traces that may show——” “All right, get going!’ he snapped, sitting up. ‘Good God! Marion’s got to be found quick! Jump out of here!” Black though his world was, he had for- gotten himself already. He staggered up out of his hammock, his right fist on his re- volver-butt. “Jump!” he roared. ‘Find her—and put me in front of the man! —— hin, [’ll kill him if I’m blind, deaf, dumb and paralyzed! What are you standing around here for? Move!” - “Sit down, comrade,” Pedro soothed. “We waste no time. We go now.’’ _ And he pressed the blank-eyed man back into his hammock. When he sat safely we obeyed his command,and jumped to our work, As the spot where our camp stood had no small trees and we could not spend time 3 Adventure cutting down thick-bodied trunks, we went out along one shore of the cove to find suit- able material for our raft. Having found it, we went on to the point where cove and creek met. We hardly dared hope to find any sign of the vanished canoes, but we did not neglect to look. As we had expected, the stream was bare. But as I turned back Pedro caught my arm. “Look!” he exclaimed. ‘“‘There in the mud!”’ ; : I looked, and gave thanks to Deus Padre. At the water’s edge was a blunt dent in the wet clay, and beside it were a few foot- marks. A canoe had bumped and stuck there, and a man had jumped ashore to shove it off. We knew the man had been in such haste to leave the cove that he had run too close to shore in making his turn, and one of the boats—probably the one towing behind—had struck. And by that sign we knew which way he had gone— down-stream. - This cheered us, for we had worried in the night because we could not tell where to turn when we should start in pursuit. Now we hurried back to the trees we had se- lected and attacked them with ax and ma- chete. Swittly we built, from logs and bush- rope, a raft that would hold all three of us. When it was done we stood a minute breath- ing and mopping our faces. It was then that we smelt an old camp. In the damp air hung the odor of dead ashes and decaying flesh. We turned and cut our way a short distance from the water, sniffing the air as we went. Soon we found what we hunted. A flimsy palm-leaf shelter at the base of a fallen tree, charred embers of secret fires, bones of.small animals and birds, a blood- stained club, and the half-eaten body of a sloth—that was all. It was the camp of a man without a canoe and with few car- tridges, forced to exist on what little he could kill by stealth. He had seen or heard us arrive, spied on our camp while we two- were away, taken a desperate chance and succeeded. | Pedro, searching the dirt floor, picked up an old cartridge-shell. It was of the same caliber as our own. We looked at each other and nodded. The thief now had plenty of ammunition, for we had left most of our bullets in the stolen canoes. Wasting no more time in the place, we | went back to our raft, and with poles in Comnicoooks (G@)