Adventure Magazine Cover — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

““A man of the tribe of the Bat.”’- We gave him hard stares. He stared back without a flicker of the eyes. “A man of Andirah?” I repeated. ‘He wore that here and then returned with his mates?” “So I have said.” “‘Then who was with you here after the _ men of the Bat left?” “No man.’ “Have care, - priest! threaten one with death.” At that his eyes swerved aside. once they came back. “T, pajyé of Andirah, spoke to the spirit within that clay beyond you.” His glance went back to the same place where he had looked before. There stood another of those big jars—an odd-looking thing, shaped like half an egg, with the pointed end up. It was perhaps three feet high, and its broad circular base covered a space nearly four feet wide. From its peak jutted a wicker plug several inches across. “One of your mystery tricks, wizard?” I started to sneer, when it seemed that a slight sound came from that jar. Stepping over to it, I pried out the woven We heard you But at stopper and was about to peer down inside, . when something told me not to put my face too close. For a long minute I stood watch- ing the hole. Then something moved. Smoothly, silently, a pointed snout rose through the opening. Eyes followed. The -whole head hung there, slowly swaying— the head of hideous death ; the flat, vicious head of a huge surucucu, or bushmaster. As I stepped back from the deadly thing a hard chuckle sounded. The voice of the pajé jeered— “You have called forth the (spirit, bold hunter—now put it back again.’ With that he whistled softly through his teeth. At once the head slid out farther. The snake was coming out of its home. Probably the wizard expected to see us turn and dash madly out and away from the: thing. If he did, he failed to realize that we were hardened bushmen. I put that spirit of his back into the Jar, but not as he would have had it. ie) I SWUNG my machete. ifm flew off the creature. Its body =< jerked back into the jar, where it thrashed about with a muffled, sickening sound. Jabbing the point of my bush-knife \ Tupahn the Thunderstorm The head into the severed head, I rammed it into the hole and shook it off. Then I ran the point into the ground several times to clean it of © poison. “So that is the ‘ine you threatened with death if it did not obey you?” I asked. A snarl was my only answer. The lower teeth of the priest gleamed as if he wanted to bite me. Perhaps he did. Once more I scanned the place. The walls, I now noticed, were hung with things such as might be expected in the hut of a medicine-man—snake-skins, bones, spiders, many dried bats, and several skulls—animal and human. Nowhere in those walls, except where we had entered, was any sign of a door.. None of the clay vessels was big enough to hold a man, unless it was built. around him after death. Yet I went poking around among the jars and tested the walls before I would admit that no prisoner was in the place. Then I had to give it up. “Pedro, perhaps you can find something,” Isaid. “Look.” As he stepped away I took his place, guarding the wizard with drawn machete and giving him no chance to try any trick, human or devilish. And my partner, still unwilling to admit defeat, searched all about the one room of the house. He even probed and smelt at the other jars, finding diabolical messes and sickening stenches, but nothing alive—not even another snake. When he too gave it up we both stood eying the pajé. The Indian’s mouth still hung in a heavy sneer. Yet in his eyes was a look that puzzled me—a look of relief and triumph together. “You know now that the pajé of the peo- ple of the Bat speaks truth,” he grunted. “Tf you seek the prisoner look in ‘the maloca. Then go your way and trouble us no more.” Pedro looked hard at him. Then he coolly answered: “T will look in the maloca. hold him here until I return. every instant.”’ The sudden scowl on the face of the pajé told us that this was not what he wanted. His idea perhaps was that we both would go, leaving him free to sneak around us and Lourenco, Watch him get us killed. Pedro laughed shortly and, before I could object, was gone. For a long time—or so it seemed—I held that medicine-man exactly where he was. he tried several times to move, but when he found it useless he shut his jaws and stood GEomichboo (c ‘Ss