Books › Blue Book v059 n06 [1934-10], 1934 › scan 5
Scan 5
Blue Book v059 n06 [1934-10], 1934
22 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1New Barbary Gold
3FROM far Port Moresby in Papua comes this fascinating story, the first of a fine series dealing with a new gold-field only to be reached by a hazardous airplane flight over mountain jungle—by the distinguished author of "The Flaming Sword," "The Forest of Lost Men," and other well-remembered stories.
5By Beatrice Grimshaw
7MARK M'CRACKEN came up the steps of the veranda, with his flying helmet in his hand.
9He said: "Persis Cameron's lost!" And the three unemphasized words exploded on the veranda like three Mills bombs.
11Most of the men were drunk; it was near Christmas, and almost every miner on the Laurie Field was "in" for the annual spree. Two were boxing in the barroom. Ten or fifteen, seated on benches, were beating on the floor with their heavy boots, while they sang, each independently of the others, "Auld Lang Syne," "Happy Days," the inescapable "Genevieve, my Genevieve," and "Hinky Dinky Parley Voo." One heavyweight, alternately sitting down on and rising up from the keys of the long-suffering piano, seemed to be attempting an accompaniment. Beneath the house, among the piles, several dogs were fighting.
13Nevertheless, as if by some miracle, M'Cracken's words were heard. One or two men in his neighborhood caught them, and springing to their feet, began to shake and shout the others into silence. The fighters in the bar, suddenly conscious of the loss of their audience, lurched to the door, and looked with amazement upon the spectacle of thirty or forty half-intoxicated miners milling about Mark M'Cracken, star pilot of New Barbary Airways, the most dangerous flying service in the world; Mark, who never treated, never drank, and seldom came into the hotel, save to bolt a hasty meal and go away.
15He stood there at the top of the steps, waiting for silence. He had taken off his overalls, and his bare brown knees showed under his shorts, the same color as his darkly coppered hands and face. Six feet was Mark, a fathom of tough young slenderness (they were all young, in that dangerous service), strong-necked, high-nosed and proudly grave, like the bronze statue of an American Indian. Only his eyes showed feeling; they were gray-blue, the most expressive of colors, and they shone in the rays of the electrics, just a little too wide open, a shade too bright.
17And now the miners, many of them less drunk than they pretended to be, were almost quiet, realizing the horror of the thing he told.
19Persis, the little girl lately from the coast, orphan of a plantation manager, left destitute and obliged to take place as housekeeper's help in the gold-fields hotel; Persis of the silk-black curls, and the long, dark-honey-colored eyes, and the intriguing poppy-bud of a mouth that (it was said) no man on all the field had yet succeeded in kissing, unless that cool young devil Mark M'Cracken had managed it—Persis Cameron was lost. She had slipped, no one knew how, from the islet of safety that was the settlement of Magadiri, into the sea of unknown ranges and impassable forests surrounding it; into the world of tumbled knife-edge ridges, peaks ten thousand feet tall, and furious rivers, the country of the head-hunters and cannibals, the Stone Age impinging upon the last and most sophisticated of Twentieth Century developments.
21A day and a half before she had gone away early, walking briskly in her white shorts and little bare legs, to see the wife of a miner who lived just over the next hill. The neighborhood was sup-
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