Adventure, February 20, 1922 — page 133: what you’re looking at

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

Up-Stream pidgin-English again. “Suppose Oagadi coffin be better coffin? Then you be sad, “no be so?” Ilona shrugged her perfect shoulders. ‘“‘Oagadi be chief. Suppose him coffim be better, be all right. Mebbe so they be all same. We go look him—you an’ m ep” Danny tried to suggest that Oagadi’s coffin was none of her business; that it was Oagadi’s private property held in trust by Marsden & Co., subject to delivery upon demand. All of which Ilona already knew, because the facts as stated applied equally to Benniba’s coffin. But that was not the point. She wanted to see whether Oagadi’s coffin was a better one than Benniba’s. “Just you an’ me go look him;” she per- sisted silkily. ‘All other men go ’way. Then we shut him up and no man savvy nothing. Mebbe so Ilona be poor Jakri v4 girl, but she be big frien’ foh you all time, suppose you try foh make her happy befo’ Benniba go die.”’ The Kroo-boys came in then and Danny became authoritative. He ordered that the Benniba case be lifted down, then set two nail-pullers at work, one on each case. He ' did not look at Ilona when he issued these instructions, but she looked at him: and Danny Kellegher had soba? made a friend for life. > When all the nails had been pulled out, and before the lids of the cases were re- moved, Danny ordered the Kroo-boys out of the store. That done, Ilona and he looked at Benniba’s coffin, which from Danny’s point of view was /just a coffin, but which made Ilona gasp and mutter to herself in Jakri, and twist her hands in a strange and savage ecstasy. Reluctantly she allowed Danny to put the coffin lid in place again, and then - assisted him with the unwieldy lid of the tin-lined outer case; after which, with apparent nervousness, she approached the ordeal of finding out whether Oagadi’s was the better of the two. Obviously she was going to be hurt considerably if it were. A deep and most expressive sigh greeted the discovery that it was exactly the same— built, to a pee “Well, I hope you feel better,’ Danny remarked when he felt that he had had enough of it. ‘Suppose Benniba go die, everything be all right now, eh?” “ . > — —_ — er ~~ et ee + _ * , > ww - 131 Ilona was on her knees at one end of the case—the end where the head of the coffin was—and Danny was at the other end supporting the lid, and impatient to put it on again. The girl’s hand fumbled at her waist-band, under cover of her overcloth, and she seemed to be so wrapped up in admiring the silken grandeur of the cofiin’s interior—particularly the spot where Oaga- — di’s head would lie—that she did not an- swer at once. “Eh-heh!” she sighed again, then smiled gratefully to Danny. “Poor Jakri girl happy plenty too much. You be proper white man, Mas’ Kellyer.” Danny grinned. “All right. Let’s get the lid on again.” Ilona remained on her knees while the ornate coffin lid was put in place, and she examined it minutely as if to be sure that in every particular the coffins were exactly the same. Her right hand continued to fumble at her waist-band until Danny turned to where the tin-lined lid of the outer case leaned against some bales of cloth. Then, faster than the eye could follow, her hand came from beneath her overcloth, and the crumbly, dust-like contents‘ of a small flat tin were emptied into the case near the coffin’s head. In a moment the empty tin was returned to her waistband; in another she was help- ing Danny with the lid of the case, taking care that her end of the labor was the head end. Then a Kroo-boy was called upon to hammer the nails in again, and when he had finished Ilona said as if she were apologizing for being so foolish: “Me, I be wife for Benniba, an’ I no like : him coffim ‘longside Oagadi cofim. You fit to put him ’nother place? It be Jakri fash’. Chief Oagadi like him so, too.” Danny saw no great harm in that, so he had his Kroo-boys move the cases so that they were separated by a space equal to the width of the store. “Benniba and him son be your frien’ foh that, Mas’ Kellyer,” Ilona said simply. “Many day pass, Benniba son be big man for Segwanga.”’ With which confident prediction hg took up her cooking-pots and departed, satisfied _ that she could have conferred upon Danny Kellegher no greater gift than the friendship of Benniba’s first born son, whose mother would be Hlona, the daughter of Agwala. comic | @ (E(0) books