Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 4, 1925 — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

806 nounced the comers. Now they waved these bits of rattan-plaiting, or held their babies high in a gay greeting. Some had tassels of wool in their ears. All had beads about their necks, or huge tin or brass ornaments in ear-lobules that were astonishingly elongated, or arm ornaments of various kinds. It was these and numbers of tiny bells which had set up the tinkling when the village had come racing to the shore. ‘* Ha-a-a!” called out Barker, half deri- sively, ‘“ here’s His Highness!” Into the very front of the jabbering, laughing crew had pressed a man who was .plainly some one of importance in the kam- pong. He appeared to be of a bulky, mus- cular figure. But his head was small and his face thin, so that there was a comical lack of suitability between head and body. The head and the face were old, the streaked hair under the head cloth being scant, and the man’s features were lined and dried in appearance, whereas his legs, below the jacket of leopard skin which he was wearing, were smooth and young. “ Lora!” he cried, naming himself. ‘‘ Lora heard among the first, while nothing was yet to be seen!” In one hand he had a paddle, carved along its whole length. In the other hung down a shfeld that was like a huge, whiskered mask. He spoke in the dialect. Barker answered the Dyak, but in Malay, nodding at him and waving a hand, after which he offered him tobacco, holding it out from his seat in the first prax, then rose to step on shore. The Malays were before him, splashing the water about the boats, as they made fast and set about their work. Viewed face on, they were no more attractive as humans than the more savage Dyaks, though their starched headdresses added to their height and appearance. But their eyes were unsmiling, sullen, shifty: their teeth all black. “ Wray, I wouldn’t make too much of a show of your shooting irons,” was Barker’s first suggestion. For Marcia he had a smile and a lift of his helmet, where she sat watching from under the ogee roof, smiling into eyes that were both friendly and ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. curious, her face shadowed, the palm fibre hat doing service as a fan and the quiet, alert Kwong Wing squatting at her back. ‘Scare the natives?” inquired the elder man, as if amused; but he thrust the pair of weapons into their holsters. He was stil! in his praz, emptied now of all its Malays except the steersman. “Tempt ’em to thieve,” Barker replied, widening that set grin. While Wray was managing a landing for himself, taking care not to soil a white suit which was still immaculate, Barker went past the praus containing the holy woman, the fighting cocks and the covered provisions to address himself to Marcia, and with such a show of respect as would, according to his explanation, impress the Zampong with the fact that the head of the expedition was a very great lady. ‘“You won’t mind staying where you are for another fifteen minutes?” he inquired. ‘“T believe you'll be more comfortable in the boat while we’re looking up a clean house for you.” She assented. “‘ Please don't hurry,"’ she said. “I am not tired, and I've got a great deal to interest me. I think I'd rather get used to the village, and let it get a good look at me, before venturing out where you are.”’ Wray at his heels, Barker at once made off, scattering the Dyaks to right and left peremptorily to make a way for the white rajah. The Malay crews needed none of his attention, taking their orders from Goboh, whose men, by now, had donned the singlets of their dirty print suits—this in deference to the white ma/erajah who was hiring them—and were rapidly unload- ing such equipment, luggage and supplies as would be needed until dawn of the day following. Lora, in dark-blue headcloth topping his warlike appearance, had taken himself off with Barker and Wray, foliowed by a half dozen of the older Dyaks. But when these few were gone, the crowd came together . again with something of the quickness and impetuosity of tivo waves, and once more advanced until they were a!l but against the boats. For those who could stay were not to be torn away from what was, to them, of engrossing interest-—the conical An CO CO NOOK