Adventure, February 20, 1922 — page 131: what you’re looking at

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

Up-Stream it cautiously down-stream under the over- hanging bush, she constituted the rear- guard without question. Benniba’s head was reeling and the things he was compelled to do he did simply in a mechanical fashion. With the assistance of the bush he climbed into the canoe and, finding his seat and his . paddle, moved his arms just as he had done all the years of his life. A sudden shout from Oagadi’s boys, who woke up too late to see their quarry escap- ing them, put more life into his arms for a minute or two. Then the sound died away into nothingness as the red fires that stung his eyes went out, and he slid forward upon his face, while the paddle slipped from his listless hands and floated off into the dark. - Tlona hung on astern. She was in no danger from immediate pursuit, because Oagadi’s sons, realizing the futility of try- ing to swim in competition with Benniba’s canoe, had begun arguing among them- selves, blaming each other, and swimming back to their own canoe in the slender hope of overtaking Benniba in that way. They did not see Benniba collapse, and when Ilona became aware that the canoe was only drifting, and had called hoarsely to Benniba and had received no answer, she climbed on board as he had done, and took what re- mained of the situation entirely into her own hands. And there the Atba Creek affair virtually ended. There was no pursuit nor any thought of any when Oagadi’s sons found their chief sprawled out upon the little matted deck of his canoe. The obvious thing to do then was to get him back to Akwanna as quickly as possible, and even the arrival at that juncture of Ogulo and his brothers, who were perspiring profusely, did not alter matters. No one knew that better than the long- armed dwarf. Excuses would be worse than useless. Oagadi had planned and Ogulo had failed, and there was but one an- swer to that. Yet, Ogulo had no thought of dying. He loved life and the taking of life too well for that. So, at a convenient point on the way back to Akwanna, he did an awful thing. He si- lently renounced Oagadi, his father, and all his house by suddenly diving overboard and swimming—as only he could swim—into the eternal darkness of the life of one who would be accursed forever. An the village of Akwanna that night 129 there were wailing and tears and a great dread of tomorrow. The village of Atba was silent. Even the sobbing fury of Ilona’s anger was stifled by the gory horror of Benniba’s shame. 081 “ IN THE Jakri country it is not good to lose an ear. Aside from all other obvious considerations, such © \e a misfortune is likely to be mistaken for a_ sign that one is owned in slavery, and though there was but little chance that Ben- niba’s plight would be misconstrued in that ~ fashion, the fight in Atba Creek had put a hated mark upon him, for which it would be necessary to take an ample revenge. It was not a matter with which the white man could have anything to do. Neither, in view of the compared results of the battle _ of Atba Creek, was it considered grounds fo war-like action on the part of the families to - which Benniba and Ilona belonged. They did not want it to be; Ilona particularly. If revenge were possible for the treachery of — Oagadi and the ignominy that had befallen Benniba as a result of it, she wanted it to be — her own. “ Benniba ceased to be a shop-boy, and for a week or two Marsden & Co.’s kernel clerk missed Ilona from her accustomed place un- der the kernel-store awning. Then one > lazy afternoon when he was watching one of his boys remove a hard, yellow-brown mass —something like mud that had caked and dried—from about the base of one of the thick, round kernel store uprights, Ilona ap- peared at his elbow, said ‘“‘Doh’’ in greeting, ~ Jakri fashion; then shook hands with him — like a white man. The mud-like mass around the kernel. store upright was a settlement of white ants, and the post, which was of ironwood, had been pretty badly riddled by them even in the short time since the kernel clerk had made his previous customary inspection a week or ten days before. However, he found it easy to forget that in talking to Ilona who, after she had watched the Kroo- _. boy apply kerosene and tar to the damaged post, suddenly seemed to find everything the kernel clerk said funny enough to laugh at, and when she left him to goin search of _the beach clerk, she declared pleasantly: “You make poor Jakri girl forget trouble <S a nm ~ ——- — Eomicboo a