United States or Malta ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One supreme mental tug and the baneful torpor was dispelled, and with stiffened legs and bruised hand@ I began to screw myself up to the free air cautiously and painfully; and there, in a beam of light from the crystal, was the slow-dripping flower-bedizened water-celestial nectar to parched lips. Hours after I awoke as from a dream. Far below a column of smoke showed that Wylo still watched.
All could see that it was Wylo's blood. It could be none other, for none but Wylo had been deprived of any. Ostentatiously the medicine-men washed the death-bone clean, restored it to its unholy nook, and returned solemnly to the camp.
Wylo, though strenuous in his love of art is ever economic of the materials by which that love finds such apt expression. His scenes are crowded.
As a warrior, and as a strategist, not altogether as an artist though sympathy must ever be with him in that o'ermastering talent of his Wylo also displayed those gifts which proclaim the gifted, though he was true to his race in many of its phases of simplicity. His skill, or rather his supreme striving to appease aesthetic thrills, made Wylo superb in the fight.
Every detail of the unholy rite was performed with determination, for he had abandoned all remorse. As he pointed the death-bone towards the camp where, as he supposed, Wylo rested, that hero cast his spear. He was strong. He had the sure eye of the artist, the vigorous hate of a black.
Perfectly unconscious of the dastard trick played upon him, Wylo continued for several days to flirt and fight. He had a glorious time, and so, too, had the piccaninnies, for Yan-coo, for reputation's sake, dared not model debils-debils merely to have their horrible heads knocked off with irreverent grass darts.
Those who did come back were vexed with burning and smarting pains; they suffered illnesses; their skin broke out into blotches; they became old and enfeebled prematurely. and all, whether they survived for a few irritating weeks or a few sad years, wore to the end a startled, awe-struck air. "That fella no more sit down quiet; him frait all time," Wylo explained.
Gaunt old father and withered old mother would tell that Wylo from earliest boyhood could always "make em good fella along tree"; and now that he was a man and there were the emblems of manhood on his broad chest deep, cut lines and swelling ridges and he oft wore his hair long and fuzzy, his hand was very free.
Then it was that the apex of a splintered peak beyond the Sentinel glittered, and that Chutter-murra Wylo, the one survivor of the truculent natives, told once more of the wonderful stone for which many had ventured, which had caused the disappearance of several, which decoyed man and beast, and stored their bones close to the awful hole whence issued the smoke which made the rain, and the dread lightning, and the thunder.
Having indicated what he deemed to be the direct route, and firmly resolving to take no risks by peering into the domain of the "debil-debil," Wylo sat in the shadow of a huge boulder whence he could command a view of the entrance to the rock-bestrewn gorge. Not more than eight hundred feet separated the spot from the summit of the peak.
Word Of The Day