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

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

Jungle Business excellence Made i in my own home State. I’ve brought five thousand with me; and ——— knows~what I shall do when they are ~ _ gone.” This to me, a native of Brazil, where, while our flavors are strong, we smoke at least pure tobacco. Yet he meant no in- sult. That sense of superiority of all things that emanated from his own petty corner of the earth was an instinct with him. I rose and left him. ™ | “My son,” I said to him. “If that God who shares with you that select little spot in your country where you were born is very good to you, it may be given to you to un- derstand and learn. In the meanwhile remember: When you can live no longer here in Manaos, try once your fortune in the upper rivers before you go back to your heaven. Ask for Theophilo of the upper rivers. It will be a sufficient passport for your safe conduct.” — And so I came away upon my own busi- ness which took me on that occasion up the Rio Negro and inland into some of the dim, overhung creeks, igarapes we call them, which come in above Santa Isabel. Word filtered up to me from time:to time about the doings of the Fire-Head; for it had been very swiftly noticed that I had shown a small interest in him; and there were men who worked on the little flat stern-wheel steamer of the Companha Navigacione, which came once a month as far as Santa Isabel when the river currents allowed, who were anxious to have my favor. It appears that he perpetrated no particu- lar enormities. Except that he drove my good friend Vargas, the proprietor of the hotel, to impotent rage by repeating to him upon all occasions the glory of some hotel or other in the north which boasted eight thousand rooms. This barrack, with in- timate details of its telegraphs and its ele- vators and its valets and its cooks of the European nobility, was thorn enough in the proprietor’s side. But its very immensity ' rendered comparison innocuous. It was when the incurable patriot began to extol the superior system of the little hotel in his own home town that Vargas at last with gnashing teeth begged him either to desist or to go and find some other hotel where he would have less to criticize. Whereupon the young man with an ag- grieved air capped the crime by apologizing profusely and saying that he thought the other would be glad to learn pointers about how an up-to-date, modern hotel was con- ducted. What the climax was that finally per- ~~ suaded him, I do not know. Suffice it that word came to me upog one of my creeks that the steamer of the Companha had ar- rived at Santa Isabel, and upon it a gringo whom the captain would have killed except that he had given it out that he came to seek Theophilo Da Costa. “Oho!” said I to myself. “This must be none other than my Pelloroxo who, with the very best of intentions has exasperated the commandante to the point of murder.” And I took two extra men to my batelao, and with eight paddles going I sped down to take charge of this responsibility that I had invited. The steamer was always delayed some five or six days, tied up to the bank at Santa Isabel. the return journey was the cargo of cas- tanha, which you call Brazil nuts. company had tried desperately for years to establish a schedule. But, dientro, Senhor, it must be admitted that we who live in the hot countries have grown into the habit of taking things easily; and nothing could teach those contractors of the nut gatherers who lived below the very belt of the equator that a few days could make any difference one way or the other. So they straggled in with their car- goes a day, two days, or even a week late. And the steamer must needs sit on the mud by the river bank and await their coming. cheerfully occupying the cubicle » which they called a cabin and =—* apparently enjoying the glower- ing hostility of the captain. “Picaro,’ I said to him. “Will you never learn? Up here is different to Ma= naos city. What have you done this time? Has nobody told you that this man is known as a killer in the rivers?” He had the effrontery to grin. ‘So the talk ran,” he replied. man laid needless insult upon me.’ And he related how, the weather being stifling, he had sat down to the midday meal which was served on the open deck, without his coat; which, he maintained, ‘since he wore a new silk shirt and a collar, would be considered in his home town formal enough in the presence of the seven or eight other ,, But the For the only thing that paid ~ SO I found my young man still. (E(0) 900 MIG <S.coO »! YF muy. et eT eT een % FP lear vt ee Sag Ho