Boy's Cinema (1930-31)

Every Tuesday BOY'S CINEMA 8 Follow a two-fisted sea-captedn and the beautiful daughter of a brave explorer—as they sail on a perilous trip to a forgotten cannibal island—where they defy storm, fire and water, man and beast—on a search for a fortune in radium ! Starring Kenneth Harlan and Lucille Brow^ne. -^^"^"^ The White Men. THE sweltering tropic heat scoincd to penetrate even to the deepest recesses of the jungle. For the three men |)lunging through the swaniiw and tangled thickets there would liave lieen no escape from it even iiad they heen in the mind to seek refuge from its oppression. The dusky shadows under flic huge cotton-trees were a mockery, seeming to promise coolness, yet in reality offering none. For on all that considerable ishind thero was no single place where the very air did not seem like the breath of a furnace. Sleek creatures stalked the bush. A tawny lion, padding his way along a forest truck with the scent of mankmd in his nostrils, aroused a thousand echoes with the thunder of his hungry roar. A hyena challenged the sound with his hideous, half-human laughter, and in his lair a dappled leopard snarled trucu- lently, frigntening some chimpanzees, who sprang chattering through a tracery of leaves and creeper-tendrils up above. These sounds were too familiar to impress the three men who were forging their way through the jungle. Thoir waking hours had been punctuated by them, their spells of slumber interrupted by them for weeks on end. If they had not known it before, they had soon learned that the beasts of the wilds were cowards at heart, easily frightened off if a man were armed and kept his nerve. The menace which these three men feared was one a hundred times more dire than the menace of skulking, feline brutes, a menace symbolised by an ominous throb that now reached their ears. Ii. was the throb of drums, sounding a grim tattoo tliat seemed to become louder and more rapid in its beat as the three men listened. War drums thudding out in mad diapa.son the frenzied measure of the death-dance. The throe men pushed on, forced to follow a track that was bringing them e\er nearer to foes who stood between them- and the safety of the coast- primitive, treacherous and fiendish enemies ripe for slaughter—black demons of the jungle. Of the three men two were white, one a thin, aged intellectual fellow known to the civilised world as Professor Adams, scientist and explorer, the other a yoiuiger individual answering to the description of .folm Rainage, soldier of fortune. The third man was a gigantic negro, and these were all that remained of a brave company which Professor Adams had mustered lor an expedition that must have benefited the whole of mankind had it succeeded. Privation, fever and wild beasts had taken their toll ere Adams had reached his goal, and now, with his mission so near aecomplishment. he was threatened with utter defeat and destruction. Yet he was pressing forward deter- minedly in the hope of reaching the coast, wlien all at once a vista of track opened up before him in a kind of avenue several hundred yards long. The dense walls of jungle on each hand and EPISODE 1. "The Coast of PerU." the canopy of boughs and foliage over- head gave the path a tunncl-liko appear ance. and at the end of it a.clearing was revealed. "Down!" Piofi^ssor Adams jerked, and suited the action to the word by dropping suddenly into a crouching attitude. His companions followed his example, find the professor lifted a pair of field- glasses that were hung aioiuid his neck. Gazing through the powerful lenses, he perceived in magnified form the scene that he had distinguished a moment before with the naked eye. The clearing was occupied by a native \ illage of th;itehed huts, and in the midst of these a mob of black savages were capering wildly, brandishing epear, bow and war-club as they danced, and every now and then raising their voices in a fierce shout. But the central figure, o:^:- which engaged the professor's closest attention, was that of a villainous negro whose half-nude body was hideously tattooed and daubed with paint. He was far inferior to the capering warriors in physique, but his head-dress of a wild beast's skull marked him as one supreme in the coimsels of the tribe. He it was who goaded the blacks as they danced, chanting to them in the bar- barous island dialect, and flourishing aii ugly bludgeon as he harangued them. "What do you see, professor?" Ramage asked liuskily, as he knelt behind the scientist. "Savages!" Adams answered in a terse voice. "Their witch doctor is up to something. I can't just tell what ", He turned to the huge negro who accompa'nied Ramage and himself, and spoke to him in clipped English. "Cebu," ho said, "look through! Kovemt)er 28tlj, 1931