Adventure, July 1, 1928 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

64 GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND right. But there’s sometimes a slip in these little barratry games. They don’t always wash. Some scut—God stiffen him!—might make a fetch of pullin’ through, and shoot his gab.” The ship owner shook an uncombed head. His gesture was dismissive of peril. “The long drill round the roarmg Horn —that’ll take care of all hands!’ he mouthed, while his pale lips slewed into an avid twitch. “Come on, Cap’n, don’t hang in irons!” “T might hang in a rope, if—” “There’s-no if to it! We can always count on ten months o’ bad weather, off the Horn. You’ll make it by the end of April. Things’ll be piping, then. The Horn—she’ll take care of everything.” “She might take care o’ me, too!” Bohannon retorted with splenetic em- phasis. “How so, when you’re safe ashore in Buenos Aires?” “Ah! You mean? I see! Hmmm, that’s better!” the captain admitted, as their two lines of understanding now began to run more in unison. He leaned forward, immense of shoulder in his hulk- ing pea-jacket. .“‘So that’s the lay? But, if I quit the ship?” ‘*‘What’s to hinder your deciding you’ve got to put in at Buenos Aires for repairs? What’s to prevent your getting sick there? Fever, or—” “How can I get sick to order?” de- manded Bohannon with some dubiety. “Hfell’s bells! Never been sick in all my life—exceptin’ sick o’ ship owners!” The captain grimaced bitterly about his well chewed pipe shank. “And if I slipped some spig doctor a few dollars to certify I was hove down, he’d maybe have me in a clove hitch.” “A man might break a leg, some way,” Mellish expounded. “Or get himself hurt, not too bad, if there was cash enough in it for him, eh?” “Yes, that’s so.” The captain heaved a deep breath, and smokily brooded. “T get your drift. Well—” “You’re my man, then?” “I ain’t sayin? — yet. Might be, though—if . . .” ILENCE stretched tensely between the two conspirators, a silence troub- led only by the dull rumor of truck traffic on the gutty, drizzly cobbles of South Street, the blurred hooting of steamship and ferry whistles in the river. A dirty day, that, congruous with the business now in hand. “If what?” suddenly asked Jason Mel- lish, under breath, eager to reach the marrow of the bargain. “If what? Why, you dried up bundle o’ sea tripe, if you double your offer, that’s what!’ “Double it! My God, Cap’n!” ‘The ship owner quavered, horribly discounte- nanced. “Where would I come in, then?’’- “As if I gave a hoot in Tophet! I don’t care where you come in—except in jail. There’s my terms, and I’m goin’ to stick to ’em!” “Youre driving a hard bargain, Cap’n!” the ship owner whined. ‘A won- derful hard—” “Hard hell!’ Bohannon railed upon him. “You’re a fine old pirate to be belly- aching about hard bargains, you are!” The glint of some ancient enmity, some perhaps more recent grudge, flicked his pale, cold eye. His fist, tattooed with a blue foul anchor, smote the cluttered desk. “Here you’re askin’ me to take a rotten old choppin’ tray of a skys’l yarder and sail her to the devil, put my own neck in chancery for mebbe a ten year bit in jail, drownd at least twenty-five men—” “They won’t be men, not the kind we'll ship. Only common jacks!” “Human bein’s, anyhow. And I reckon most of ’em wants to live as bad as a sculpin like you! You’re askin’ me to drownd ’em and lose the ship. And all for why?” “Partly,” answered Mellish, “so you can have ten thousand good dollars to salt away in your pocket, for your old age.” “Stop your gammoning! A devil of a lot you care about my pocket!’ the cap- tain flung at him with an objurgation comnliclooolks.com