10-Story Book, February 1928 — page 49: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE SOUTH SEA ISLAND NUMBER 47 (Continued from page 45) _ We three, as I was saying, were busy at this prize-packet business, when from the direction of the nearest island came a yelling as though fifty lunatic asylums had broken loose at once, and through the fringe of jungle broke a single figure. After it came a capering, shrieking mob. It didn’t need half a glance to see that they were out for blood, and that the fig- ure was making for the water as a last refuge. It dashed, with a mighty scatter- ing of spray, straight in, and began to swim toward us. We could see the dark head bobbing, and the thrashing movements of the arm. Suddenly the swimming, which had been steady enough -for a championship, be- came flurried, and the Kanaka nearest me made a noise at the back of his throat and started waving the fishing harpoon he’d brought. The figure was being chased by a shark—and the shark was winning. The figure made a game fight, but you need steel as well as pluck to settle ac- counts with a competitor of that class. The game would have been up altogether | if, on the spur of the moment, I hadn’t snicked open my claspknife and taken a header overboard. It was a close thing. The brute’s jaws snapped within three inches of the girl’s thigh—yes, by this time I’d realized that it was a girl—before I got close enough to use the blade. And both of us were pret- ty well used up by the time we were hauled into the boat. For a couple of minutes after that we could only gasp and drip and stare at one another, The girl herself was worth look- ing at. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen, but she was built on lines that would have sent an artist crazy. And her rig-out, soaked as it was, was uncommonly fine. Yards and yards of some silky yellow material was wound about her body from the shoulder down- ward and ended in a sort of divided-skirt effect. She’d ropes of dyed pods, beads and shells slung around her neck, and blossoms on her hair. I saw at once that she was a half-caste, and of a type mighty unusual in these latitudes. She shut up the Kanakas, who’d been powwowing together, with a flourish of her arm, and spoke. “You savee my life.” “That’s all right,’ I told her. “Could not have done less. Better come aboard and get dry, hadn’t you? We don’t stock much in the way of female fripperies, but there’s bound to be something big enough to cover you.” She nodded and squatted down obe- diently, though I could see she was boil- ing to say more, and we started back to the ship. Old Sebastien had forgot- ten all about his cigar by the time we got there. He was a heap too interested. “Tf that’s your idea of treasure-trove,” he says, grinning, “you’ve had a pretty fair morning’s sport.” “Good enough,” I says. “She’s our new, non-paying guest. I’ve told her to go down into my cabin and rummage there for some things to put on until her own are dried. After that I guess we'll dilute the sea water with a mug of hot coffee apiece.” “And then,” chips in the lady, as calm as though the sea wasn’t still running off her like a sluice, “I tell you both more things about myselfs.” Ten minutes later she appeared again, wearing a pair of patched breeches and a very old, very faded jersey, with “S. Y. Halcyon” in red worsted letters that sprawled across her chest. The Lord knows where she found the thing, but we so called her, from that day onward. Between gulps of coffee she explained that she was the daughter of an American trader, long since dead, and the chieftain- COMMICEOOOKS.CO m