Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 23, 1924

# Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 23, 1924

This issue opens Shifting Sands by Garrard Harris, an adventure serial set during World War I. The protagonist, Breckenridge Mosby Watson, a Kentucky-born American, has hired aboard the trading schooner Windsor Castle out of Jamaica to work his way home after being stranded in South America. Captain Harry Scruggs, commanding the vessel with an erratic drunken temperament, abuses Watson and withholds his wages ($40) while planning to force him into continuing to Jamaica. When the ship docks at Cristobal in the Canal Zone, Watson escapes, confronts Scruggs in a warehouse with assistance from a sympathetic American soldier, fights the captain into submission, retrieves his pay, and obtains written proof of settlement. After kicking the beaten Scruggs as repayment for earlier mistreatment, Watson flees aboard a departing train bound for Panama City, evading military authorities.