Part 6 (1/2)
A fewhis last instructions, while we of the shore party dropped to our places in the big whaleboat
”You're not to follow us in whatever happens--ht more'n three canoes at a ti you Obadiah--he's a goodish shot--and four of the best boys”
The youngwith us, but Bartlet knew
This was Papua, where wise h to take a second
We took none ourselves as ed slowly shoreward and sheered off out of spear throatching the wall of jungle There is no beach inside Barange, only the led pythons through the oozy bank of salt marsh It was very still and very clear in the afternoon sunlight, though the heat pouring out over us see vegetation Now and then our crew of clean-liaze turned askance We heard their quick breathing and the drip fro else At such tie where each leaf and frond and webbed liana with its e had an unnatural brilliance and precision, like a labored canvas or a view seen through a stereoscope
And there stole upon us again the oppressive solicitation of the land, subtle and perilous Behind the beauty and wonder of it, beyond those bright shores and the first low foot-hills of the range--what? nobody knows, that is the charions, empires untouched since the birth of tiold, cliffs of ruby, ”cataracts of adamant,” any marvel that fantasy still dares to dream in a prosaic century They may be; no man has ever drawn the map to deny them They must be: why else should the sphinx s on us nohispered Jeckol suddenly ”Why don't they do so?” He fiddled nervously with his rifle and sniffed ”What a place! This air is deadly--rotten with fever Faugh! It's anier's throat!”
I blinked at the little chap and with the sa up in the bow The trader was just lighting a short-fused stick of dynaar Before I could cry murder he had lobbed it in and shot the bush
It struck with the s toward us and the roar rolled back frory rocks Like a multi-colored dust of the explosion burst a fishers, flashi+ng reen and blue and scarlet in the sunshi+ne But they dwindled and passed The echoes died
The sreen wall closed up without a scar; the silence engulfed us oncethere, futile invaders who assaulted its immense riddle with a squib
”They don't seeled Jeckol
But Bartlet raised a finger
Far away in the wood so on and at last charging recklessly through the undergrowth We had the spot covered froe a creature that leaped and clung a ”Mahrster!”
Aape with his knobby joints and the bones in a rack under his black skin--and shaken now by the ecstasy of terror! Not at us He faced the guns without wincing His beady eyes kept coasting behind him the way he had come as if he looked to see a dreadful hand reach frole, the land, hat he feared--
”Mahrster,” he gasped, ”you take'ood fella too ed Peters ”What fella shi+p?”
Fro word
”By Joe--he's one of their boys! Give way, cap'n”
We edged in until Peters could yank the quaking bundle aboard and pulled again to safety froitive stammered his story in broken _beche de mer_
It was true: we had found a survivor from the lost _Tie ”long tied In the attack on the schooner he had escaped by swiion, he had taken to the tree tops after the fashi+on of his own people, the painted monkey folk of Princess Marianne Straits--a facility to which he owed his life, it appeared, for he had since lived on fruits and nuts aathered froht him up
”But the others--them white fella?”
”All finish,” said Kakwe bluntly
”How?” cried Peters