Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 146: what you’re looking at

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

i & —* > ' ra nr =. x ie te ¥ <= See agi 4') TNS $ ; eae ae, He aelA SS > Za 0 0 Ca aie et 4 5 pes 5 } hie \ ] ‘ th Yi prox tj Y, Fy By ALBERT DORRINGTON ple. Loon. 7 | ~ Kum’s legs had warped like Cupid’s bow -— -WiTTLE Kum Ling sat cross-legged in the eae darkness, his glance fixed on the can- a2 4d dlenut flare in midstream. Now the darkness of Beetle Creek, at midnight, was enough to make a Chinaman blink and fum- Above his head was a solid canopy -of mangrove forest. Not a star gleam pene- trated the quiltlike roof of dripping foliage. _-. Out in the black scum of the river floated a barrel-shaped cage. From the top of this wire cage bummed the candlenut flare. Four ae stakes driven into the mud held the cage in position. For years little Kum Ling had sat thus, peering through the Stygian gloom, listening to the chut-chut of the Papuan poison drip, oozing from every root and ae reef that bordered the impenetrable swamp. And always with the same happy result. For out of the mud and slime of innumerable centuries came that which Kum Ling most needed, money and gifts, light and opium. Also it brought him the love of his children and the blessing of his aged father in Soo _ Sheer joy of metion. Yet in a little while he would be free to pass his evenings on the divan of fat Ming Boh at Samarai, where the smoke of heaven smoothed the warps and stifled the five squealing devils in-a man’s heart. 3 Suddenly the flare on top of the cage in midstream began to jazz and shiver in the Kum batted his eyes and grinned. The jazz motion increased to a frantic, witchlike dance. It was as if a thousand horses were straining to snap the cage from its moorings. Up and down and round it. milled in a whirlwind of mud and white fire. Kum crouched low to avoid the blasts of water and stomes showered to the bank. In a little while the flare grew steady enough to reveal a twelve-foot alligator floating dead on the surface of the creek, its great snout imprisoned in the open shaft — of the barrel-like cage. ——— With a long boathook Kum unhitched the cage from the four stakes and drew the huge Saurian to the bank. Always these monsters of the mud were = _ through watching the face of the creek. _ attracted by his midnight flares. And the |