Action for Men, May 1960 — page 34: what you’re looking at

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

VICE FLEET ...... She schemed like a man, brawled like a man, dressed act like a woman again, she found she couldn’t make Indecision was not one of Eric Cobham’s weak- nesses. After a brief career as smuggler and highway- man, interspersed by a sentence in infamous Newgate prison, he, too, had come to Oxford to make his for- tune. He’d taken a menial job at the Bradford. House because of the opportunities it offered for petty thievery around the inn. Hence he’d been prowling the wind-swept corridors on cat feet at an hour when guests might be expected to be abed, and hence he’d surprised old Bill Hayes counting his hoard. Knife drawn, Eric Cobham was peering through the door, ready to relieve Old Man Hayes of his hoard of gold. Loosening his knife in its sheath, the young man knocked gently on the door of room 303. Startled, old Mr. Hayes swept his gold pieces into a small, heavy bag which he pushed under a nearby piece of furniture for concealment. Then, hesitantly, he drew back the bolt of the door, opened it an inch, and whispered, “Who’s there?” “It’s only me, Mr. Hayes. I wanted to see if—” Eric Cobham uncoiled in the open doorway like a well-tempered spring. His left hand grabbed the old man’s throat as he plunged a knife into his heart. With a gasp William Hayes sank to the floor, incap- able of making a sound, his life ebbing fast. A moment later, clutching the bag of gold sovereigns, Eric Cob- ham was away, and he never returned. It was the beginning of Eric Cobham’s career as a pirate, and it had a fantastic denouement: Ardent Potter, the innkeeper, actually was hanged for Eric’s crime. Potter, also bent on trouble, visited the murder room, was surprised by other lodgers, taken up by the watch, and eventually hanged at Newgate for the crime he plotted but did not commit. Meanwhile, however, Eric Cobham was well away toward Bridgeport, the purchase of a cutter, re- cruitment of a pirate band and, incredibly, marriage to a laughing minx who not only joined him in piracy but outdid him in cold-blooded killing. When Maria Lindsey married Eric Cobham they formed the only husband-and-wife pirate team which history has re- corded, and the combination was to be so effective that, instead of ending on a gibbet as one might expect, Eric actually ended his days as a vastly wealthy, respected and bewigged judge. “Mr. Higgins, what do you make of that vessel ?”’ Captain Hillary Jones, of the East Indiaman Star of India, passed his spyglass to the mate, braced him- self against the main weather shrouds, and waited. The Star of India, a huge vessel for the time and a sluggish sailer in the light air currents then prevailing off the River Mersey, was outward bound for China. In the master’s strongbox reposed 40,000 pounds sterling with which he was to purchase opium; also, some priceless jewels. “She’s smartly handled, Captain, I’d say. I'd esti- mate she mounts 14 guns, and she does seem intent upon setting the weather gauge of us, doesn’t she?” “T don’t like her looks at all, Higgins,” boomed the pink-cheeked, potbellied, well-weathered old skip- COMMICLOO SJ (Cc)