Part 8 (1/2)
”There's the glass--”
Peters offered the diary
”What does he say hilass to a helun-ridiron of bars--salasses He wants to break it, but he can't He wants to unscrew it, but he can't He wants to cut himself loose, but he has no knife Do you see hihtin' for his life in there--_with one good arm_?”
”Why--” cried Jeckol, in sudden appalled perception ”He couldn't even eat He's starving inside that suit!”
”Starving?” echoed Bartlet, fro of thirst by inches!”
I do not kno it struck Jeckol, but it seemed to ed Bartlet ”Go on!”
But it was not so easy to go on Peters found whole pages of the Book impossible to decipher At places it lapsed to a ain the soft lead was hopelessly blurred over, where the pages had been often thumbed, or perhaps cru upon his search
_ uneasy God They got ] joke, to pass out here like a rat under a bell jar Not me I don't mean to_
Curious When Peters resumed the thread, when he read that eloquent line, those of us who had known Ji a profound and secret thrill For this was the ardless of the outcome--that alone, beyond any conceivable aid for the first time in his life, speechless, helpless, at the end of all those aiven him his way so often with men and devils, and women, too, Jim Albro was still the Jim Albro ”that you couldn't keep down”
His body was consu with its own heat He had to sche the dress and collapsing it at short intervals to renew the foul air He had to view the teoes and figs and sugar cane, wild berries and young drinking coconuts freshly opened, with the new, cool e of a people, and to count by the wheeling sun how many hours of torment were left him Worse than all, he had to withstand the pitiless irony of it, the derisive grin of fate that drives s, and he would not yield He did not mean to And lest you should think the phrase a mere flourish--observe the testimony of the Book
The tribes flocked in that second day to do hi in the square Soh seat Some unusual rites were enacted before the te and the doctors wore their vers andand circling to the chant Jim Albro watched and noted it all behind his solid inch of plate glass; not passively, not indifferently, but with close attention and the very liveliest interest Aye, this God took an interest in the welfare of his people!
Heaven knohat he saw in the Papuans of Barange By all accounts they are a plum-black race of rather superior ferocity--six feet is their medium stature and their favorite dish a human ear, nicely broiled So the old traders report, and never an explorer has improved the description It required so his head--quite literally--to learnto do but to sit And while he sat he busied hiest, and blindest, reading in the diary
_A prime lot of raw ers? Unspoiled [part illegible] the ] behind the hills [lines ] Wonderful!_
Wonderful, he says Wonderful what? Chances, perhaps Opportunities
Possibilities Certainly nobody else ever had such as lay before Jim Albro if he could have won free to take the even then of e of Papua that struck fire to his roving and restless soul? Had he fallen enamored of the sphinx, and had she drawn the veil for him? It may be The fact stands that, fevered and tortured as he was, burning with thirst and pain, he discovered so that cry from him We hear the cry, and that is all we hear--nearly
_suppose I should take a hand at this du to trust old Gum-eye And afterward_
Peters looked up froe
”Well?” said Jeckol impatiently
”That's the end,” announced Peters
I cannot say what the breathless group of us had been expecting