Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1920 — WHITE MAN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WHITE MAN

By George Agnew Chamberlain

Author of “Horn*.” "Through Stained Gbea.” "Jahn Bogardua.” etc.

Oop/right, 1919, The Bobba-MerrlH Company CHAPTER IX.—Next day Andrea Is seized with a violent attack of pernicious malaria and for three days white Man wages a desperate fight for her life. He succeed! and the incident results in the discovery of their love for each other. Andrea learns that her companion is Robert Oddman Trevor, once famous flyer, victim of nervous shock and incapacitated for work in the air. The trip to the coast, where he met Andrea was undertaken through necessity, and he is afraid to risk her safety in another ascent. CHAPTER X.—A dinner for which they had both dressed in European style is interrupted by the sound of a chantey. White Man knew. Andrea suspected. Then when he sent her to her hut she knew that the “other man” was approaching. From her hut Andrea hears the stranger (a tenor who had disappeared after a short career which had made him famous) sing the aria from “Faust,” and his wonderful voice attracted her. Then seeing his horribly mutilated face she is overwhelmed with terror. He knocks her down and carries her to his boat and to his craal.

CHAPTER XI. | MacCloster’s craal was a masterpiece of Ingenuity. In Its center rose the stupendous caia that had astonished Andrea even from a mile away. Around the monster hut was an impassable boma or barrier of thorns pierced by a single entrance; outside the boma, in the form of a ring, came an enormous beaten court which embraced a large shade'tree, indispensable as a nucleus for pow-wows and men’s gossip. Around the beaten circle were three thickly serrated rows of huts and their dependent outhouses. Enclosing the entire human beehive was a stockade of giant cactus with an arched entrance at each point of the compass. Aside from the repulsive fundamental idea of the enterprise, MacCloster’s establishment was astonishingly moral. It was true that he had contracted for over a hundred and eighty wives in strict accordance with native law but it was equally true that he L jotted this army of consorts, without exception, to veritable husbands of his own choosing. The only point of divergence "from native custom was that he demanded no payment of obolo from these drones and as a consequence retained the right of disposal of their female offspring. This innovation would have struck at the root of the African’s conception of vested interests had it not been for the giant singer’s canny astuteness in facilitating to the drones the purchase of one wife each in their own right, thus killing two birds with one stone; for the native male normally works but once in his life and that to the sum with which to acquire the mate who will not only thenceforth support him but eventually bring him a return of two or three fold on his investment. As a consequence, MacCloster never lacked boatboys, machilla carriers, ivory hunters or porters and controlled as well an army of women and girls whose spare time was applied first to the preparation of food and wood and water fetching and then to the cultivation of the enormous shambas which produced corn and millet in great abundance for the lucky members of the close corporation. That there was a subtle poison at work somewhere in this social cosmography was evidenced by the fact that while there was always a long waiting list of recruits for the establishment there was also a tendency on ithe part of many natives to face starvation rather than accept the questionable Intrusion of the white man in the Intimate structure of their family life. It was further evidenced by an abnormal apathy which seemed to possess MacCloster’s people in direct proportion to their increasing well-fed <nd lazy sleekness. This, however, was a phenomenon that did not trouble him so long as 'there was a constant demand In excess of the supply of marriageable girls; on the contrary, while it puzzled him, he welcomed it as making toward tne easy Enforcement of a strict discipline., In all matters that affected

the Internal Use of the strange Camp, he was sole arbiter beyond any cavilling, and a martinet. Andrea could have taken a reasonably calm Interest in all the details that crowded to her attention during her rapid progress Into the heart of MacCloster’s stronghold had It not been for an incident that revivified all her fear and repugnance toward the man and which occurred as they entered the ring court. MacCloster, striding ahead of her, suddenly paused and his horrible face apparently achieved the impossible by undergoing a debasing transformation. His eyes had fallen on a group of carriers, newly arrived, and the crew of his freight boat The negroes were squatting in a circle on guard, waiting to make delivery to their master of various cases. Some of them evidently contained cloth, cutlery and knickknacks dear to the native heart, but one, at least brazenly proclaimed in deeply burnt stenciling its contents to be gin. It was on this small square box that MacCloster’s eyes were riveted. He turned and spoke to Andrea In an oily tone that for some inexplicable reason froze her blood. It was as though he had suddenly assumed a new and strange personality upon which her twelve hours of brave Intercourse with him had had no occasion to establish its grip. He became a

stranger within a stranger and hopelessly Inaccessible. • "Come with me, my dear," was all he said. She followed him slowly, an ijnaccustomed weakness In her knees. He entered the monster caia and waited for her. For some moments the gloom was Impenetrable to her eyes but as their pupils dilated she began to discover shadows within the shadow until she was able to make out the entire scheme of interior arrangement. The ground floor, with the exception of an open space around the trunk of the tree, was devoted to a series of vast sleeping rooms into which, she gathered from a muttered phrase of MacCloster’s, were herded nightly all the girls of marriageable age, accompanied by a few of those old harridans who In certain tribes act as governesses with the qualification that it is their duty to instill all the knowledge which the mentors of the young of civilized peoples are supposed to withhold. Around the trunk of the tree, which was twelve feet or more in diameter, a rough spiral Stairway had been constructed to give access to a platform which was built on and around the main intersection of wide-spreading limbs. This platform was Inclosed and lighted by oil lamps. A glance within told her that It was the abode of MacCloster himself, the well-nigh impregnable center of the spider’s web. From every side of It extended the sturdy limbs of the tree and up each of them climbed a series of projecting cleats which served as ladders to reach a vast system of smaller platforms, built wherever the natural disposition of the branches afforded adequate support. These lesser rooms were used as storehouses for merchandise, provisions and Ivory; and a few of them, near the very top of the tree, were fitted out as guest chambers adapted to the safe-keeping of doubtful strangers as also for the effective hiding of chattel, human and otherwise, which for one reason or another MacCloster desired to keep out of sight. „ Into one of the latter Andrea was finally ushered, breathless from her climb. On Its floor was a fresh grass mat, a clean blanket, a clay pot of drinking water with a dipper made out of a coconut shell and a square box filled with sanfl, evidently intended for the bed of a cooking-fire. The only light came from a cotton wick laid in an open vessel filled with oil from the dastor bean. “There you are, Sissie,” said MacCloster, in his new oily voice, “everything you can possibly , need and whenever you want to go out, all you have to do is to climb down and go through my room. You won’t have to do your own cooking for a day or two J\Hl send leM Sfioff up.” . .1.

Andrea’s heart sank to depths that it had never reached before; her lower lip trembled and drew down at the corners. “Now, don’t look so glum,” said MacPoster, leering at her. “Just remember that you couldn’t be safer in b- -4 than you are here!" He turned and left her with a laugh at his own Joke. The measured “Ha 1 Ha! Ha!—-Ha! Ha! Ha!” reverberated through the Interminable mazes of the entombed tree. More than ever it seemed the mocking laugh of thirty voices, chanting In unison.- She threw herself full length, face-down, on the grass mat and covered her ears with her hands. Presently bodily exhaustion came to her aid and she mercifully slept. Hours later she awoke to a feeling that she had been definitely summoned by her subconscious self to face an Imminent danger. Night had fallen and its peace had settled on the craal In general, but there was no peace In the great cala. Out of MacCloster’s room arose through the whispering stillness a series of monstrous sounds, monstrously magnified—gurgling, rumbling curses, mutterings, the occasional crash of a shattered empty bottle. Then came a silence more ominous than the noises, for it was alive, a creeping thing Avith tentacles that seemed to be writhing up the limbs of the tree. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

"Come With Me, My Dear,” Was All He Said.