Adventure Magazine Cover, June 20, 1925 — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

Author of “The Sleeping Partner,” “The Cask,” etc Ts - EE that island over there, away on the port bow?” I looked in the direction to- : ward which the skipper of the Golden Treasure was pointing, and with some difficulty was able to make out a faint blur, rather like a smudge of dark cloud, against the horizon. “I can see something,” I answered a little doubtfully. ‘Well, that’s Atimara. It’s marked on the chart, but if you didn’t know you might easily mistake it for a fly-blow. I once knew a skipper, not well acquainted with these latitudes, who made that mistake and piled up his ship there in a fog. Anyway, that’s Atimara, old David McClure’s is- land.” “And who,” I inquired innocently, “‘is old David McClure?” “Never heard of David McClure! Oh, well, perhaps you wouldn’t, being a stranger in these parts. But he’s a rum old bird, is McClure. One hits on some queer speci- mens in these parts, but he’s about the queerest of them all. Yes, I think I may say that. And his teeth— Mean to say -you’ve never heard about his teeth?” “No, but I should like to.” ‘“‘Why, those teeth of his, they’re known from one end of the Pacific to the other. Famous, they are. But Jil tell you about them if you like. And it’s a rum story.” “The Teeth of McClure,” copyright, 1925, by Rolf Bennett. The skipper settled himself more com- fortably in his deckchair, then filled and lighted his pipe. When it was drawing to his satisfaction he started, and this is the story of the teeth of McClure. “About thirty-five years ago,” he began, “David McClure came to Atimara, which, as I’ve told you, is no more than a flea-bite of an island, as islands go. Where he came from and why he went there, I don’t know and, anyway, it doesn’t much matter. But he started right away to annex that island and he did it. Nobody interfered with him, for nobody knew whether the island be- longed to the French, the British or the Germans and, what’s more, nobody cared. So McClure, he built himself a store and imported a lot of trade-goods which he bar- tered with the natives for copra. And a mighty good thing he made of it, did McClure. Before he came, the natives must have wasted tons of cokernuts through carelessness, ignorance and the like, and also through not having a regular market. Well, McClure changed all that and before long Atimara was shipping more copra than many islands double its size. “For a time, maybe a year or more, Mc- Clure was content with that. He’d gota monopoly of the trade and he was respected by the natives. He didn’t try to govern them or make any laws, though some of their customs weren’t what you'd call COMmiclboookks.CO