George Allan England

“ Bongao chewed a while before answering. Nothing hurries, eight degrees from the equator; not even love. Bongao was remembering, too, that skirmish with the swine. Kanabuhan had scouted a little in advance. Was it by accident that the ladrone's old smoothbore had fired low, that Kanabuhan had dropped with a veil? Bongao smiled to himself. ”

“ In a score of days, the change. There will be confusion. The old pigs care nothing. They are going home. The new pigs know nothing. Only the old gray boar of a señor colonel remains to fear. But there will be found a way to hunt that boar!"
He gestured with a curious finger-sign. Tinaka nodded comprehension.
Another pause—long, heavy. The sun, sliding to rest, laid upon them a great weight. They watched the huge copper ball as the hills beyond Cayaban gnawed up into its lower rim. Finally Bongao spoke again:
"Only one thing is needful—one of the swine to hunt with us!" ”

“ Climate, water, jungle, native girls, everything! Why, colonel, the very sky is pathogenic to a white man. All so exotic! There's something deeper, too; there's a world of psychology in the way they go mad. ”

“ The colonel pondered.
"Look him up!" he commanded tersely. "That buffalo-chap is your cue. Take what men you need, and don't make the mistake of having too few, either. A bad place, down yonder! Got it? That's all!"
Another click of the heels, a salute, and Connors was away. The colonel folded one white-trousered leg over the other, and sighed.
"Hanged if it isn't worth seeing to a finish!" ejaculated Aylward. "I know one man of Connors's squad!"
"Well, I hope you get Sullivan, that's all," commented the colonel cynically. ”

“ Something that bites 'em, drags 'em down and out! That man Sullivan, E Company, for example—you know?"
The colonel nodded a grave head.
"A pity!" he passed judgment.
"Lord knows where he is. If he'd only hung on another week, this whole business would have slipped off him like a dyspeptic dream. And now—! Nothing but some psychological twist could ditch a man that way. A twist, I tell you—"
"Or a woman," murmured the colonel.
"Same thing! It is a woman this time, by the way. Connors told me. You really ought to hear about it, from Connors. He's inimitable!" ”

“ Out from a dripping nipa shack, perched high amid the reek of that coast, a man and a woman were peering through a little open space at the distant, silent off-drawing of the ship.
"For every bullet of ours, the swine shot a hundred, two hundred!" the man was growling. "Against devil-shooting, what can we do?" ”

“ Down the white and sinuous road through the jungle that fringed Malajacar Bay hiked a score of men at the route-step, in charge of Corporal Connors. Dr. Aylward, in "fatigue," trudged with them. Flap-flop, the canteens wigwagged on their hips; the pendulous bayonets kept rhythm. Atomic dust enhaloed them, drifted on ahead in the mid-morning breeze.
"Another half-hour, docthor, dear," Connors confided. "an' faix, King Sullivan's princess-pipe will be nothin' but cold ashes, an' our little arrmy of anti-mesallyance invasion will be playin' wid the royal excheckers! ”

“ But I'm to call on her,' says he, 'an' if this ain't romantic an' oryental an' Arabian-Nightsy. then I'm an Orangeman! Why,' says he, 'it's what I been lookin' fer all me life—a fairy tale come thrue! ”