Adventure, July 1, 1928 — page 69: what you’re looking at

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

A novel of a condemned windjammer and tts shanghaied crew on a tempestuous voyage avound the world’s worst corner Pictures of an- cient windjammers that once had flown the Mellish house flag hung askew against the walls. On top of an obso- lete safe lay tat- tered copies of Lloyd’s Register, from sailing ship days. Two or three half models, a little crude but revealing the love and care of forgotten lob- scousers who had used their watch below to carve them, depended from rusty wires. A whale’s jawbone stood in one dark corner. Andon shelves reposed va- rious dusty curios— a balloon fish, two varnished flying fish affixed to boards, a full rigger in a bottle, Chinese brass gadgets, a pierced metal ball with a lamp inside it, odds and ends of trinkets. The same bleak, wintry gleam that fell upon these trifles showed Captain Isaac Bohannon as a bull necked bucko of sixty-odd, going a bit bald, with dangerous looking pale blue eyes under bushy and graying brows. The eagle beak of his nose, dented by a scar that wiped across the prominent cheekbone, gave witness to one of his many battles. His thin gash of a mouth twisted a bit as he made speech: “Yes, I’m the devil’s boy to do it, if I mind to. But if we miss stays, there’s 63: one hell’s flamg’s long stretch in quod for both of us. Not as I care how long you count cell bars. You’d be doing a hundred years, hand runnin’, if you got your dues!” The captain’s voice was spotted with hostil- ity, as he filled his pipe and fired up. “It’s myself [’'m thinkin’ of,” he added, with a huge outblowing of smoke. “No jails for mine, thankee!”’ “Clew up!” re- torted Mellish, with a pull at his sagging lip, loose over a white bristled and unshaven chin. “Clap a stopper on all that, Cap’n. Don’t you go worrying about jails!” The old ship owner squinted from be- hind his steel rimmed glasses, which were mended with wrappings of black thread; for in his squeeze penny philosophy a farthing saved was better than two earned. “Stress o’ weather and a rotten, hogged old chump of a ship off the pitch o’ Cape Horn—who’s to prove it?” ““Never can tell,” the captain growled, with sullen smoldering eyes. “Somebody might blow the gaff and bring charges.” ““Won’t be anybody fo bring charges! When it’s over—” “Yes, I know. They’ll all be to Davy Jones, and gone. That is, if it works comicloooks.com