Argosy, Vol. 122, No. 1 — page 48: what you’re looking at

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

“rusts ” and flake-fungi beneath their feet. Here and there a ball of lambent flame ap- peared, drifting idly above the steaming, festering earth. Thirty thousand years before, men had called them “ will-o’-the-wisps,” but Burl simply stared at them, accepting them as he accepted all that passed. Only a man at- tempting to advance in the scale of civiliza- tion tries to explain everything that he sees. The savage and the child is most often content to observe without comment, unless he repeats the legends told him by wise folk who are possessed by the itch of knowledge. Burl watched for a long time. Great fire- flies whese beacons lighted up their sur- roundings for many yards—fireflies Burl knew to be as long as his spear—great fire- flies shed their intermittant glows upon the stream. Softly fluttering wings, in great beats that poured torrents of air upon him, passed above Burl. The air was full of winged creatures. The night was broken by their cries, by the sound of their invisible wings, by their cries of anguish and their mating calls. Abeve him and on all sides the persistent, intense life of the insect world went on ceaselessly, but Burl recked back and forth upon his frail mushroom beat and wished to weep because he was being carried from his tribe, and frem Saya—Saya of the swift feet and white teeth, of the shy smile. Burl may have been homesick, but his principal thoughts were of Saya. He had dared greatly to bring a gift of fresh meat to her, meat captured as meat had never been known to be taken by a member of the tribe. And now he was being carried frem her! He lay, disconselate, upon his floating atom on the water for a great part of the night. It was long after midnight when the mushroom raft struck gently and re- mained grounded upen a shallow in the stream. When the light came in the morning, Burl gazed about him keenly. He was some twenty yards from the shore, and the green- ish scum surrounded his now disintegrat- ing vessel. The river had widened out un- til the ether bank was barely to be seen THE ARGOSY. through the haze above the surface of the river, but the nearer shore seemed firm and no more full of dangers than the territory his tribe inhabited. He felt the depth of the water with his spear, then was struck with the multiple usefulnesses of that weapon. The water would come but slight- ly abeve his ankles, Shivering a little with fear, Burl stepped dewn into the water, then made for the bank at the top of his speed. He felt a soft something clinging to one of his bare feet. With an access of terror, he ran faster, and stumbled upen the shere in a panic. He Stared down at his foot. A shapeless, flesh- colored pad clung te his heel, and as Burl watched, it began te swell slowly, while the pink of its wrinkled folds deepened. -It was no mere than a leech, sharing in the enlargement nearly all the lower world had undergone, but Burl did not know that. He thrust at it with the side of his spear, then scraped frantically at it, and it fell off, leaving a bletch of blood upon the skin where it came away. It lay, writhing and pulsating, upen the ground, and Burl fled from it. He found himself in one of the toadstool *ferests with which he was familiar, and finally paused, disconsolately. He knew the nature of the fungus growths about him, and presently fell to eating. In Burl the sight of food always produced hunger—a wise provision of nature to make up for the in- stinct to store food, which he lacked. Burl’s heart was small within him. He was far from his tribe, and far from Saya. In the parlance of this day, it is probable that no more than forty miles separated them, but Burl did net think of distances. He had come down the river. He was ina land he had never known or seen. And he was alone. All about him was food. All the mush- rooms that surrounded him were edible, and formed a store of sustenance Burl’s whele tribe could not have eaten in many days, but that very fact brought Saya to his mind more forcibly. He squatted on the ground, wolfing down the insipid mushroom in great gulps, when an idea suddenly came to him with all the force of inspiration. He- would bring Saya here, where there cComiclbooks.com