Adventure Magazine Cover — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

The Grudge of Ya Israng The clerk went white. “I suppose it’s you and I next,” he said in a very small and frightened voice. ‘‘We can hardly escape it, can we? Four whole days! I hope you arrested the scoundrel. He shall swing for it as soon as I get authority from the Home Office.” Yates listened to him uneasily. This whole attitude in the man who was now acting resident was discouraging. It would do no good to hang the man for an act of ignorance. It would only precipitate vio- lence and rebellion at once. Strong and wise measures were needed now and no hesitation about it or waiting for approval from Singapore. ‘Under Ranleigh the whole residency bade fair to be massacred within two days. If nothing more, the lives of Browne’s fifteen devoted Sikhs were not to be sacri- ficed in the white man’s attempts at mis- government. .“Unfortunately he was too quick for me and got away,” Yates replied. “It’s all our fault really, Ranleigh. Ya Israng ex- pects a son shortly, and the last thing we should have done was to make him carry that water, even if he was the only one who could be trusted to see that it was got from the spring. We should have detailed him a coolie——”’ ‘What rot!’ interjected Ranleigh im- patiently over Yates’ sympathy for the benighted native. ‘Really, Mr. Yates!’ He raised his eyebrows. “And now he’s gone to the stockade— with news to Raja Ahmad of just how mat- ters stand here,’ finished Yates imper- turbably. Ranleigh whistled. He realized now their danger. Fear came into the green eyes in his flabby and sallow face. The Severe and carping spirit with which his clerkly mind was beginning to upbraid Yates for letting Ya Israng get away was now replaced by a very different attitude, that of shelving the responsibility on someone else—any one so long as it was not himself. “I say, Yates,” he began conciliatorily, “‘you’re an American of course—” as if that placed him somehow in a lower order of human beings—‘“‘but you are assistant resident here, y'know. Sir Harrod left no orders as to who was to succeed Browne, but— Of course there is no precedent for it, y'see— And I have no instructions from the Home Office!” 143 “That’s all right!’ broke in Yates quickly, glad to terminate all this backing and filling and relieved to get hold of the affair himself. “I'll take charge here. T’ll take all the responsibility; only, you keep out of that telegraph office. I doubt if you could get even Singapore now anyway. The wire is probably cut somewhere in the jungle by this time. I want a free hand until Browne pulls through. You leave it to me; I used to have some influence with these natives!’’ His reassuring tones quieted Ranleigh, who tacitly turned over the office of resi- dent to the Yank and hurried out. of the room to look after the two patients. _ Webster Yates, acting resident of Samang, paced the room considering. ._ Re- bellion; pestilence; a private grudge, in- satiable, unappeasable; this was the cheer- ful array of things to be dealt with. Yet his craggy face was cracked by a pleased grin of enjoyment over it all as his lean body bent forward with hands clasped be- hind him in the onward march of that thinking spell. The face was all planes and angles; cheek bones a pair of twisted flats; jaw and chin another pair; sunburned nose- bridge as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. A more and more jubilant and resolute expression grew as Yates’ mind grasped cheerfully the reins of this business. The grudge, he decided, could be settled in only one way; a life for a life. That lay on the knees of the gods. The pestilence might claim him next; the danger to the residency had abated, now that its source was clear. A detail of Sikhs and acoolie to the spring would insure pure water hereafter.. Browne’s superb constitution and Crabbe’s care of himself as a wise doctor in the tropics gave them both a chance to pull through. There remained the question of how to abate the cholera over in the stockade of Kwala Luwas. ‘That was one thing. The other was rebellion, and the answer to that was just plain bluff. To show no fear at all before the natives and use tact in carload lots was their only salvation there. His intimate knowledge of Malay life as an ethnologist gave Yates a grand advantage in managing this situation. Great stuff, knowledge! himself as he paced about and about. It gave him the key over there. And, like all explorers, Yates was a fair doctor himself and possessed a highly efficient medical kit. cComiclool He grinned to | C©