Page:Weird Tales Volume 14 Issue 2 (1929-08).djvu/101

You are right, señor, I comprehend them perfectly. I have led no fewer than three on the long jonmey into the jungles. They are very strange. Each male—I know nothing of the women—has in his heart one great passion, an idol that he bows down to and worships and slaves for and makes sacrifices to, even to the sacrificing of his family, or his life, or his own happiness.

I am told that every day in North America—in your country, sir—the natives rush about hither and thither in the wildest confusion, each bent upon serving that special passion which is in his heart, so that they collide, vehicles smash, the weak are tramplied upon. Is that true, señor? But pardon, it is perhaps not the discreet inquiry.

Have you a match? Thanks. Yes, I will accept a cigarette, since you offer it. But it was only that I desired a match to whittle down for a toothpick.

Those three Yankees—la-la! Each with the hard thing in his heart. John Axe, he was for gold. He must have it. But what he brought from the jungles, sir, was an arrow wound and a fever.

And the man Thripp, hunter of bugs. Yes. Given to it day and night to the exclusion of mercy for those who served him.

And the man that named himself Professor Eric Lincoln Dobro. What do you think, señor, was his idol? The strangest of all. The seeking of the Ultimate Sanctuary, the Law of Happiness, the Point of Eternal Serenity. Yes. Ha-ha-ha!

The moment the news reached the