Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 85: what you’re looking at

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

The Crowing Hens of Totulu “They speak they fix um fahine along post by reef. Suppose ship he come along next time, she all right. Ship no come, she mate—die. Jimmy glanced at Mrs. Boyle, but she had retreated to the veranda. Ell,” he said. ‘‘You think they mean hit. Sure will do?” ‘Sure, Kimo! They plenty drunk, plenty mad.” ““Lokke ’ere Fuatina,” said Jimmy prying out some staples. “You climb um through here, you run along canoe and go fast to Uafotu, plenty quick you paddle. You speak Kapitani Boyle, you speak Tamatau, they come quick!”’ The girl slipped between the strands and was gone in the shadows. Jimmy could hear her swift feet lightly padding on the sand as he started to refasten the staples. “My Gawd!” he said, half to himself. “Hif Hi honly ’ad a gun!” ‘‘There’s one in the storehouse,” said Mrs. Boyle. ‘‘Where’s the girl gone?” “Gone to get ’elp,” said Jimmy tersely. ‘“‘Where’s the gun?” “It’s a shotgun,” said Mrs. Boyle, shiver- ing as the drunken yells sounded from be- yond the fence. “But I don’t think it’s loaded. It’s on the wall.” “To ’ell wiv the load,” said Jimmy. “Git hit. Hill bluff h’em. H’im goin’ to start the searchlight.” He found fresh carbide and charged the lamp. “Not a drop hof water in the bloody shop,’ he announced presently. ‘“ ’And me that bottle hof gin. Hit may work.” As the spluttering burner broke into a spasmodic flame, it seemed to wrench forcibly from the darkness the leaders of a rabble of women with wildly rolling blood- shot eyes and dishevelled hair, streaming round the corner of the fence. “You keep back hout hof sight,” com- manded Jimmy to Mrs. Boyle. “ ’And me the gun!” ‘Now then,” he cried, as the frenzied savages shrank back from the barbs of the wire, “‘W’ot do yer want?” , “Eyah!” shrilled the dusky harridans, “Eyah! kela fahine papalangil” ; The front rank, thrust against the tor- turing strands, extricated themselves with bleeding hands and torn garments, only to be jammed against the wires once more by the rest. 83 Jimmy held the barrels of the empty shot- gun where the searchlight shone on the barrels. ‘You cut your luckies hout hof this,’’ he shouted, ‘‘Helse Hi shoot. Fuatina she go fetch Tamatau—come along plenty quick. Chuck hit now, I tell yer. Hall of yer!” f. by MRS. BOYLE, cowering on the 4s, veranda, looked fearfully at the <<” howling mob, their mouths slaver- ing, hands clutching between the wires, vivid in the strong but uncertain ray of the sputtering lamp that threatened instant darkness as it choked on the mixture of carbide and squareface. _ “You git back w’ere you belong now, Hi tell yer,” repeated Jimmy. “Hi, you Tiarau!”’ He singled out a gaunt old hag with a frizzly mop of gray hair above her leathery face, wrinkled by time and her own passions till it looked like the leather of an Imitation alligator-skin bag. Her mouth, horny-lipped, held two yel- low tusks in the thrust-forward lower jaw. Her face was like that of a giant lizard. She was an ancient of ancients, the oldest living being on Totulu, an aunt of Tamatau’s, accredited with powers of witchcraft and puri a’naana—praying to death. “You, Tiarau,” said Jimmy, speaking in — Totuluan, with a Hoxton, London, England, accent, ““l'amatau will be here with the cap- tain right away. You make these foolish women go home.” “E-yah,”’ snarled the crone in her own language. “This white woman is a witch and she has set her spells upon our men as she did upon us. Only with us, being women, her magic could not last. You say the men will come back. I have known white people to lie. How do we knew they will come back? I tell you if they do not come on the intide, the white witch shall die! For, at the outtide, we women ef Totulu, whom she bewitched, will set her out by the reef to work her spells and bring back the men, or she shall surely die.” In the vindictive attack of the hag’s speech, Jimmy could glimpse a picture of sharks coming in with the rising tide at dawn, swirling through the gray sea and tearing at something tied to a stake. The affair was grim. The little civilization these Totuluan women had acquired, had been stripped from them as they might have CoOMmichoooks CO