Adventure Magazine Cover, June 20, 1925 — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

The Teeth of McClure 75 palaver, and McClure stood on the veranda waiting to hear what they’d got to say. ‘So after the kava bowl had been passed round, the oldest headman got up and spoke. During the night, he said, a lot of damage had been done to native property; fences had been knocked down, garden crops damaged, a chicken killed and even some of the family washing, left out to dry, had been destroyed. And to prove it, each man held up what he’d brought with him— the damaged gourd, the dead chicken, the torn /ava-lava and what not. “It was then that McClure had what he took to be an inspiration, and sorry enough he was for himself afterward. It seemed to him that nothing better could have hap- pened. It seemed sort of providential to him that all this damage should have been done just then, and he thought he saw his way to take advantage of it. So what must he do but pitch those headmen a fine yarn about how the other white man had stolen the sacred teeth in the night, and how the tooth spirit was angry at this outrage and shad played the —— with their property to jlet them know it? “The only way to appease the tooth spirit, he said, was for them to insist on Price putting the teeth back in the place where the spirit was accustomed to look for them. If they didn’t do that, and the teeth didn’t come back, he said, the gardens and such-like would be destroyed from one end of Atimara to the other and no two ways about it. “When McClure had finished talking, the oldest headman stood up again and started to speak. He said it wasn’t any tooth spirit which had destroyed their garden stuff and so on, but the faubada’s goat, Jake. He’d worked free from his moorings in the night, Jake had, and had gone on the spree. Lots of the natives had seen him and some had tried to catch him, but though he’d got several fathoms of chain adrift of him astern, Jake had been too slippy for them. “Well, McClure sent for his servant—a Chink that did his cooking and the house- work—and the Chink said it was quite right what the headmen said. Jake had got loose in the night and escaped. He’d come back early in the morning and Man Fong— that was the Chink—had caught him and fastened him to his moorings again. “Now McClure knew enough about the native mind to be aware that it hasn’t got room for more than one idea at a time. ‘Those chaps had seen Jake raising Cain in their garden patches, and it was no use try- ing to tell them it was the tooth spirit. They knew better. And the fact that he’d tried to make out it was the tooth spirit hadn’t done him any good, either. He could see that. It was a great pity he hadn’t waited till he’d heard all they had to say, before trying to put that yarn across. All he could do now was to promise com- pensation for the damage Jake had done and let it goat that. He knew he’d madea mess of things, did McClure. “Of course it wasn’t very long before every one in Atimara knew that McClure had lost his teeth. Now you’ll generally find that a native, though he may be plunged fathoms deep in superstition, has a logic that’s as simple and unanswerable as a child’s. And the way those chaps looked at it was this: If McClure hadn’t got the teeth, then he couldn’t make the tooth spirit—or whatever they reckoned it to be— he couldn’t make it punish them if they went to Price and got better terms for their copra. ‘There was no two ways about that, was there? And they did. In a few days McClure’s store was as deserted as Price’s had been. Not a native came near it, nor brought so much as an ounce of copra. Nativelike, they forgot all the good he’d done, like making roads, planting coker- nuts, making decent laws and so on. All they cared was that they could trade with Price on better terms than with Mc- Clure. “Mind you, McClure could have afforded to offer them terms that would have put Joe Price out of business in a week. But having been topside joss in Atimara for so many years, he wasn’t going to put himself on the other man’s level, so to speak. But what hurt the old man most, I fancy, was the fact that the natives didn’t come to him to settle their disputes like they used. McClure had, in a manner of speaking, come to look on them almost as his children, and it was a terrible hard blow when they de- serted him and went instead to a stranger, a man who hadn’t been on the island three months. And there was another thing as well. Having lost his teeth, McClure couldn’t eat anything but slops, which he’d never been used to and didn’t like. COMIGDIOOKSEEO