Adventure Magazine Cover — page 156: what you’re looking at

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

Ii 146 SEVIER had returned from a boring Po evening at the moving-picture show, where he had sat for two hours looking at a ridiculously antiquated film that had amused him in Philadelphia ten years before. The evening, however, had not been precisely wasted. The audience was sufficiently entertaining. Gentlemanly Parsees with varnished hats and long dusters; bearded Khojas with coiled turbans of tarnished tinsel; tall, thin Somalis, whose delicate features showed their Asiatic origin despite their black hair; Bedouins, sun-tanned, hairy, half-naked, with a wild and furtive air about them; red-faced English soldiers in short breeches that showed their bare knees; silky- bearded Jews with weeping eyes and curls danghng over their ears; beautifully fea- tured Banians, mild-eyed, with girded loins and the caste-mark on their fore- heads; sallow-skinned Arabs of all sorts, in nightgown-like kanzas, footahs of all colors, tinseled jackets, turbans, tarbooshes and embroidered skull-caps, bearded, smooth- shaven or with the crisp little mustaches of boulevardiers; and scattered among them all, pale-faced Europeans with long red noses, sun-bleached eyes and an air of ineffable boredom—all had interested him. With hazel eyes, easily lighted with good- humor, yet calm with an expression that showed the American was always under safe control, he had watched the audience. What stories! The Bedouin fingering the handle of his jambeer * and looking furtively at the spindly askarz on guard at the door! Two Arabs with clasped hands covered with a scarf, discussing a deal in coffee through the silent medium of the fingers! A fat English soldier staring with bulging eyes at a slim Somali girl laughing loudly to show her beautiful teeth! Desperate-eyed youngsters wriggling on their bare bellies under the walls of woven palm! The fat, arrogant Jew accompanied by a large, smirking family! A group of Abyssinians with short, curly beards and bread-brimmed felt hats, looking with somber eyes at the astounding spectacle of Nick Carter being pursued through the sewers of Paris by Sherlock Holmes in a Canadian canoe! 0 A curved, double-edged dagger worn in the front of the te Adventure These Abyssinians had made an im- pression on Sevier. The faces of many of the men in the audience were familiar; but the Abyssinians were figures out of the ordinary. Moreover, they had noticed him, calling one another’s attention to his presence, and this attention filled him with a slight uneasiness. When he reached home Sevier undressed thoughtfully; but instead of going imme- diately to bed he passed through the vast arched chamber that was his dining-room and out on to the broad veranda that opened upon the mazdan and looked out upon the silvered bay. The white, shining moon was directly overhead. The light was so clear and brilliant that it was quite possible to read without a lamp. Sevier noticed that the sleepers on the roof-tops and on charpeys drawn across the doorways of the gray-and-white buildings B ARABIA JIBUTIC, GUE ADDIS~ABEBA , ~~ Se ee HARA \ ABYSSINIA AFRICA .--" 4 > had carefully taken the precaution of drawing blankets or sheets over their heads; they looked like sacks of coffee thrown about haphazardly. The crowd from the moving picture had filtered away into the bazaar. Sounds of active life were rapidly dying away. He could hear the distant rumble of the dis- posal carts going about their unpleasant business; but in the bazaar behind him there still sounded occasional bursts of laughter. Abu Khalil’s house on the street behind was particularly lively. The arcade was brightly lighted with huge kerosene force- lamps about whose blue globes a cloud of in- sects buzzed. The raised floor of the arcade cConmiclool o(CO)