Abington High School - Abhis Yearbook (Abington, MA)

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6 THE ABHIS ing and screaming of macaws, parrakeets, and countless other boisterous members of the animal kingdom, -the cries of which are echoing and re- echoing through the impenetrable thickets of this desolate wilderness. As you are about to return to the clearing, the usual tropical noises are abruptly stilled by the agonized, shrill, almost inhuman shriek of some terrified creature, which gradually tapers off into a chortled gurgle! A tense unbearable silence fol- lows. Suddenly there is a crackling and crashing from within the underbrush and through the mat- ted green foliage and entangled growth appears the massive head and powerfully molded shoulders of a huge gorilla! It emerges slowly from the snarled mass of vegetation, and as you stand there motionless in your tracks and gripped by a paralyz- ing fear, you distinguish the ugly features and gro- tesque crinkled countenance of the enormous hairy monster, not fifty yards distant. One great bloody paw tightly clutches the horrible, sickening re- mains of a human arm, evidently wrenched brutally from the socket of its recent owner. The explana- tion is now all too simple. An unfortunate native bearer must have unknowingly antagonized the beast in some manner so as to achieve such fatal results. As the animal, apparently insane with an- ger, advances with murderous intent, you overcome your horror and break out into a frenzied run for camp. The gorilla rises to its full height, and as it expands its mighty chest, the jungle resounds with a ferocious thundering roar that strikes terror into the hearts of all within hearing distance. Then the hairy beast, its tortured mind maddened by your intrusion on the scene, charges after you. You are now running the most important race of your ca- reer, a frantic dash for life! Presently you remem- ber the pit! If you can reach the pit before that insane monster reaches you, perhaps you can win this desperate race. For a brief instant you halt, turn, and rush into the jungle, at a right angle to the direction of camp. As you stumble blindly through the jungle thick- ets, tripping constantly over concealed vines, horri- fied, you hear the crashing and crunching of mighty feet on the growth behind you, signifying the steady gain of that clumsy monster, surprisingly agile for his great magnitude. The seconds appear as minutes, the minutes as hours. You cannot keep this up much longer! Could you have misjudged the position of the pit? Suddenly an uncontrollable panic seizes you, a sharp pain stabs you in the small of the back. You are about to surrender to a horrible fate when mi- raculously the pit looms ominously into view and with renewed effort you cover the remaining yard- age to your objective, clearing the pit with a final burst of strength, the feared gorilla grunting sadis- tically, not more than twenty feet behind. Almost instantaneously the beast plunges through the con- cealing underbrush and with a rumbling crash plunges, howling, to the depths of the pit! The gorilla is captured. You are safe! WILLIAM GRooM, '53 THE ARTIST First of all, let me tell you that Chris was an artist who could draw almost anything that anyone might ask her to draw. Inspired by her admiration for anything beautiful, her artistic hands moved like wildfire over canvas. Chris had always dawdled on her school papers instead of doing the regular work and sometimes had not done very well in her subjects. It all happened right after Christmas when her mother gave her that beautiful art set, complete with special pens, paper and other seemingly end- less articles. On the first day of school after Christmas vaca- tion Christine's mother said she would have to go shopping and did not know when she would be back. Chris skipped back to school and boasted to her chums about her new art set. She had an unusually successful day in her studies and had just turned the corner onto the street leading up to her house, when, suddenly, disturbing her beautiful dreams, came the sound of a siren! The thought struck her -a lire engine! Chris did not think much more about the subject until the red truck also turned the corner, going in her direction. She smelled smoke! She watched with eager eyesg then suddenly the truck screeched to a stop! Men began yelling for hoses and ladders, running frantically about. Finally Chris came to her senses. Her house! They had stopped at her house! Before she knew what she was doing, she found be

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THE ABHIS 5 LITERARY AFRICA! LAND OF MYSTERY AND ADVENTURE It is a damp, humid day in midsummer. You, a member of the safari of james A. Cahill, the well known adventurer and explorer, are trudging deep into the heart of the sweltering jungles of the Dark Continent, exotic equatorial Africa. As the result of the jumbled reports of a number of frightened natives, you, an African agent for the Chicago Zoo, in co-operation with Cahill, are stalking that most ferocious of jungle beasts, a crazed gorilla, It is near noon of the fifth day of the expedition, which has reached the point where the incessant routine marching will cease and the safari will make preparations to accomplish the purpose of the trek. The native bearers hurriedly pitch camp in a fairly large clearing, like a wide shallow cup, and within an hour and a half you are tramping off into the jungle, with several strong blacks, all equipped with picks, shovels, and the like. Some distance from camp you find a suitable location and set about the procedure of digging a great hollow pit. The broiling sun, high in the eastern sky, is a branding-iron, burning intensely down with all its barbaric force upon the hapless party of workers toiling furiously in the noonday heat. The white wide-brimmed Panama hat you wear is little, if any protection at all, from this ball of flame which is beating mercilessly down upon the murky swamps and remote tropics of the Belgian Congo. Your scorched sun-leathered face is moist with dripping perspiration. The long hours drag lazily by, the heat increasing with each hour and becom- ing extremely unbearable. Fatigued, you pause mo- mentarily to rest and watch, with unseeing eyes, the negroes as they labor relentlessly in seemingly effortless movements, their ebony black bodies pol- ished in sweat to a jet-like sheen and their muscles rippling and their sinews straining to the task. You slave in the boiling sun throughout all that afternoon, the dark jungle growth like a choking wall all around you, literally steaming. Shortly be- fore sundown a pit of great depth is completed, the sides of which are leveled to an icy smoothness with a relatively new hardening compound to in- sure the safe imprisonment of the gorilla while in captivity. Witli the natives' assistance you conceal the opening of the pit with a quantity of dry tam- bouki grass and underbrush suitable in appearance to the locality, and with a few minor additions on the following day it will be in readiness for the hunt. It is after dusk when you wearily plod through the grey-green gloom into camp, exhausted, bitten by flies and a thousand voracious breeds of insects, and your disheveled hair a snarled nest for crawly vermin. You retire immediately to your tent, too fatigued to eat, your thin cotton shirt, which is drenched with oozy sweat, perfumed by an ex- tremely repulsive odor. You bathe yourself rapidly, recline leisurely on your cot, and relax to the low, weird and somewhat languorous chant of the native bearers and to the soft tempold shufiling of their feet as they writhe and sway to the pulsing rhyth- mic throbbing of the drums. This ritual continues far into the night and you lie there within your tent in silent but anxious anticipation of the mor- row's activities. Gradually you drift off into a deep slumber, incurred by the perpetual whirring, Whistling, wheezing, buzzing, and peeping of bats, insects, and other minute jungle creatures. You arise before sunrise the following morning to find no one stirring in camp and indulge in a light but ample breakfast. Because you have noth- ing of great importance to accomplish at the time, you decide that a brisk stroll through the nearby jungle would be highly refreshing and that you would gain an opportunity to view at close range a few of the many strange and weird inhabitants of this beautiful, mysterious continent and to study their habits. As you make your way over knotted clumps of dwarfed brush and through the intricate mesh of greenery, the sun, in all its golden splendor, rises above the boundless veldts and jungles of Af- rica's remote interior, a glittering contrast to the background of pale blue sky. Tangled interwoven vines criss-cross the heavens above into a tangled canopy through which the brilliant rays of the sun pierce, forming a sort of lattice-work pattern on the jungle floor. The jungle is now reverberating with the chattering of monkeys and the clamorous caw-

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THE ABHIS 7 herself running as fast as her nimble feet could carry her. She reached the front lawn, stumbled over hoses and under ladders and dashed to the door. The key! Where was the key? No one was at home to let her in. She sobbed, tears running down her cheeks. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! She must find that key! She fumbled in her pocket for it. It wasnit there! It must have fallen out while she was running. The window! Try the window! Ah! At last luck had turned her way. As the window opened, she jumped in and stood, paralyzed with fear. Her dog! Were was he? Sud- denly she saw a small figure running toward her and breathed a sigh of relief, but by the time she had gathered the small creature up in her arms the flames were licking her face. Then she spotted a blanket and reached for it. As she did, it caught on fire. The thought came to her that she was trapped! Trapped in a room full of flames, with no door or window near. Was this to be her fate? She could not die like this, she mustn't! She had a happy future ahead of her, so she knew she would have to take a chance and run through the ilames to the window! With the dog whimpering in her arms, she made a dash for ir, yanked open the flaming window, and jumped to safety. As she reached the front of the burning house, the side which she had just left collapsed! After it was all over, Chris, with her mother and father and her dog, surveyed the ruins of what once had been a very beautiful home. Then Chris remembered her beautiful art set, and looked at her hands. They were severely burned. With her hands outstretched, she turned to her mother and father, trying to hold back the tears that soon splashed down harder than ever. Her mother gasped, her father said nothing but just stared. Later the doctor broke the news to Chris, men- tioning something to the effect that it would be a matter of months before she would regain the full use of her hands, but she didn't seem to hear him. She just sat and stared. Chris could not cry any more. JUDY GAFNEY, '54 THE SPELLING BEE When the spelling bee was only three days away, Sarah Chadwick had already studied practically every word in the dictionary. Even though she was only in the sixth grade, Sarah was the best speller in her school. That was partly because there were only twenty-four pupils in the school, and her mother had taught her to read and write before she went to school. It's going to be a hard job to win the spelling bee with Timothy Squires and his sister Janie com- peting against me, said Sarah to her mother as she was studying words and thinking about the light, fluffy snow falling outside. I know it's going to be hard, but do not be in too much of a hurry. You'd better stop studying for a while now, because I want you to go to town and get some paregoric for Johnny's cold. Write it down, so you won't forget what it is. Sarah sighed and said in a tone of disgust, How can I write the old word when I don't even know how to spell it? Who'd ever want to know that word, anyhow? After putting on boots and all of her other winter clothes, Sarah trudged out of the house, angry to think that her mother didn't want her to study so that she could win the bee. It was mid afternoon, and the sun was slowly setting as Sarah shuflied along, trying to remember the name of the medicine she had just secured. P-a-r-e-g-o-r-i-c-! What a queer name, p-a-r-e- g-0-r-i-c. Mrs. Snow said that it would help Johnny a lot. It ought to, I went through enough to get it. It was two days later, and everybody was in a dither, especially Sarah. There were only four other children left besides herself, and it was her turn to recite. The boy before her had just spelled separate as seperate S-e-p-a-r-a-t-e, said Sarah, quite sure of herself. Suddenly the professor said something which made everyone's heart sink. Since there are no more words in the speller, I will open the diction- ary to any page and use those words. All right, Timothy, spell paragraph.