Adventure, July 1, 1928 — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

THE ROARING HORN 65 thereto. “Though if it’s anythin’, it’ll be a fatter wad of money than ten thou- sand. By the lovely ratline, it'll be twenty, and not a soumarkee less. It’s what you’re goin’ to salt in the bank, insurance money on hull and cargo, you’re thinkin’ about! All right. Dm yours to oblige. But mind now, twenty thousand. And paid on the nail, too, before so much as ever a moorin’ line’s cast off!’ “Hard terms, Bohannon. Wonderful hard terms!” “Yes, and this here’s a wonderful hard game.” The captain put a curt period to the discussion. He blew thick gusts of smoke. “Take it or leave it. Go get a better man than I am, cheaper—if you can!”’ “Lord bless me, it’s extortion! But— well—” “Done, eh?’ Bohannon demanded. Silently old Mellish nodded; and for a moment silence held them once more, in that dingy spider web where murder wholesale was a-planning.. HEN all at once the old ship owner spoke. “Tt’s my last job,” he declared, rubbing a mottled and veinous hand, toadlike flesh, across the flabby bags of his cheek. “Sink or swim, I’m going to try it. After that, [lay up. It’s coming to me, something tidy is—” he sought to salve his conscience—‘“‘after years and years of a losing game. I’ve got to have something to retire on, now that I’m broken down from keel to truck. I can’t starve!” “Not hardly, with all you got laid by!” “**Pon honor, I’m a poor man,”’ Mellish affirmed. “For years now, I’ve been on a lee shore with no way to claw off.” “Have, eh? Why didn’t you go into steam, then, like the rest of ’em have, mostly ?”” The ship owner sketched a vague ges- ture. “Couldn’t,” he murmured. “Some way, couldn’t get a handhold in it. I’m of the old school. The old, windjamming ‘schcol. The world’s passed on and left me hove down, Cap’n. I belong back in another New York and another age 0’ ship owning.” “Pathetic, ain’t you?” sneered Bo- hannon. ‘‘Well, what can’t be cured must be insured—right up to the trucks, and lost at sea.” He tamped his pipe with a horny thumb, and added: “T don’t want none o’ your guff, not by a sailful I don’t. Whether you take your canvas off and lay up, or not, don’t make a damn’s odds to me. All as matters is business, right now. A bargain’s a bar- gain, and the least said the better.” “You’re right, there, anyhow. No long tongues wanted in this little deal.” “We've both got to keep ’em damn’ short,” the captain affirmed, “to save our bacon. But let’s clew up and see the color of some cash! Though I know you fair hate to fork over the rhino. It ain’t for nothin’ that old Jason Mellish has got the rep of bein’ so close he’d sell his grandmother to make sausage skins of her. Cash in advance, y’understand. Let’s have a stain o’ rum on it, and get to work!” The old ship owner bent, hauled open the lowest drawer of his desk; fetched out a squareface and two thick, dirty glasses. He poured rum, slopping a little as his hand shook. One glass he shoved toward Bohannon. The captain spatted his pipe sparkily into the cuspidor and gripped the glass in a hairy, tattooed paw. “Well, happy days!” huskily said the old man. “And plenty of ’em!’’ Bohannon echoed, gulping his liquor at a draught. The ship owner drank more slowly. A little of the rum guzzled down his un- shaven chin and dribbled to his waistcoat, untidy with grease spots reminiscent of slobbered food. “Ah!” he exhaled, setting down his glass: “That suits me to the ground. Good stuff, a raw day with a thick o’ fog, like this!” “If you weren’t so damn’ stingy you comicloooks.com