Adventure, February 20, 1922 — page 128: what you’re looking at

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

- ~. ’ ro, 9 2 126 plain straw hat, and even plainer blue coat - and a. conservative over-cloth of good Mad- ras, he was a clean-cut business-like young man with the light of ambition in his eye. As they made their way to their canoe, which Benniba had to push out of the mud, Hlona said in a casual undertone: “Ogulo’s arms are itching. They have not killed a man in many moons, and in _Atba Creek, beyond the ju-ju beach, it is _ dark as the death of a thieving slave. ” Benniba turned his head. He was not at all excited or suprized. He could not afford to be, with Ilona looking on. Was he not to be the father of her children? When he glanced in the direction of Ogulo’s canoe, his expression denoted, if anything, a trace of boredom. “Dark for short arms, dark for long,” he _ said simply, and applied himself to the busi- ness of releasing the canoe from the mud. Ilona helped him, lending strength of her supple young body while her heart sang with the primitive joy of knowing that Ben- niba was, in truth, a man. And presently, as the slender craft was sliding into deep water, she leaped upon the fan-like stern of it and for ‘a moment or two remained -, crouching on her knees like any jungle cat making ready to spring. But when Ben- -niba clambered into the canoe forward - Tlona went docilely to her place in the seat behind him and picked up a paddle. ) AS IF the first sweeping movement of her arms was a signal that the day should end and the night begin, the sun dropped deep and like a plummet beyond the mangrove-bound horizon and, in a minute more, feeble hurricane lamps on beach and river stabbed at the black African darkness with pin-points of light. “One machete between two makes Ogulo’s arms the stronger,” Ilona declared in a monotone to the broad of Benniba’s back, feeling of the blade of the machete she re- referred to with her naked feet, to be sure - that the weapon was in its accustomed place; the machete, like the calabash and the chop-pot, being a necessary adjunct to every well-ordered Jakri existence. ‘And Ogulo follows us.’ “Ogulo will think he is a man if Ilona -turns her head to look at-him to see whether he goes up or down,” Benniba reproved quietly, staring straight ahead. : “T did not look. But I hear. The pad- - Adventure dles of Oagadi’s sons make a sound like the iron tail on the white man’s ships, And their canoe is heavy. Also they think our eyes are blind and our ears choked with ker- nel dust, and they forget that I am the daughter of Agwala. “T have watched and I have seen and I have waited, and today Oagadi drank with the white cap’n and went away, making all men believe there were devils in his belly and his feet. But his feet and belly lied, just as his tongue will lie after he has struck. “When all men know that on a certain day Oagadi was so filled with the white 4 -\\ TRACING B\\ aah ig man’s gin that small boys laughed at him without fear, who will believe that he fed our bodies to the crabs? Our canoe is light; that of Ogulo is heavy. If we are swift——” She left Benniba to infer the rest of it, and he was not slow to appreciate her cleverness in seeing through Oagadi’s plan of action and carefully prepared alibi; an alibi that would be supported, if necessary, by the testimony of the white men on Marsden & Co.’s beach. Neither was Benniba loath to take Ilona’s advice in the matter of more speed, though he did not quicken his paddle- stroke too perceptibly lest Ogulo discover the fact too quickly. When they had traveled down the broad EComichbooks (Oo) f -