eaming across
Makassar Straits, we picked up the Little Paternosters, when our tiny
vessel poked her bowsprit up the steaming Koetei into the heart of the
Borneo jungle, I knew that, though invisible to human eyes, he was
standing beside me on the bridge.

* * * * *

Until I met the young-old man to whom those magazines which devote
themselves to the gossip of the film world admiringly refer as "the
Napoleon of the movies," it had never occurred to me that adventure has
a definite market value. At least I had never realized that there are
people who stand ready to buy it by the foot, as one buys real estate
or rope. I had always supposed that the only way adventure could be
capitalized was as material for magazine articles and books and for
dinner-table stories.

"What we are after" the film magnate began abruptly, motioning me to a
capacious leather chair and pushing a box of cigars within my reach,
"is something new in travel pictures. Like most of the big producers,
we furnish our exhibitors with complete programmes--a feature, a
comedy, a topical review, and a travel or educational picture. We make
the features and the comedies in our own studios; the weeklies we buy
from companies which specialize in that sort of thing. But heretofore
we have had to pick up our travel stuff--where we could get it from
free lances mostly--and there is never enough really good travel
material to meet the demand. For quite ordinary travel or educational
films we have to pay a minimum of two dollars a foot, while really
unusual pictures will bring almost any price that is asked for them.
The supply is so uncertain, however, and the price is so high that we
have decided to try the experiment of taking our own. That is what I
wanted to talk to you about."

"Before the war," he continued, "there was almost no demand in the
United States for travel pictures. In fact, when a manager wanted to
clear his house for the next show, he would put a travel picture on the
screen. But since the boys have been coming back from France and
Germany and Siberia and Russia the public has begun to call for travel
films again. They've heard their sons and brothers and sweethearts tell
about the strange places they've been, and the strange things they've
seen, and I suppose it makes them want to learn more about those parts
of the world that lie east of Battery Place and west of the Golden
Gate. But we don't want the old br