Adventure, July 1, 1928 — page 78: what you’re looking at

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

72 GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND in the lot,” complained Peter Mayes. ' *“Damn’ town rats. Look.a’ them dagoes an’ Dutchmen! Nigger, too! An’ if that one there aint :a Rooshian Finn, I’ll eat my sou’wester. Everybody knows the kind o’ luck a ship ‘carries with a Finn aboard. Sure, that’s nigh worse ’n a preacher ora woman!” “Barrin’ that. gammy foot New! ‘und- lander we got to the wheel, now,” Lead- spitter judged, “and a few more, I'll be tarred if the lot of ’em is worth the powder to blow ’em to hell! How in blazes we ever scraped up a bunch 0’ sodjers like this gets me!” “Same here,” Mayes agreed. He spat a great deal of tobacco juice over the lee rail, now—as the ‘sails were drawing well—inclined ‘toward the gray, smooth seas boiling past; then, after a pause, “That feller in the focsle, him the Old Man had brung aboard last night, all barreled up, ‘sure, I wonder if he’ll be any good?” “Looks like he could thand, reef and steer,” Leadspitter opined. “Looks like a good sailorman from ‘truck to toes. A complete hand, I’d call him. A grand built, fine grown young ‘feller and a blue water man, or I’m no judge. Soon as he gets on an even keel we'll turn ‘him to and soon see, by Judas Priest!” “Hope he comes out o’ his square bender afore long,’ the Irishman re- marked. ‘“‘We need good men, worse ’n I need a drain o’ rum this blessed minute— and that’s bad enough, Lord knows! Work enough to do and a plenty.” He glanced aloft at the swelling belly of the maintopsail. ‘‘Well, we'll preach the boot and belayin’ pin gospel to ’em, all right. We'll convert ’em, or sure, nobody else’ll never have the chance to. Now then, here goes to choose watches, eh? An’ A sweet, ‘proper job it'll be, at that! Jumpin’ Jupiter, yes, sir!” later, with the China Girl heeled well over on a south southeast course and with the rain abated to a penetrant drizzle, the young husky of Gites wit more than an hour their discussion dragged himself out of a bunk on the starboard side-of the forward deckhouse, which ‘served as a forecastle. For a few minutes he sat on the bunk edge, elbows on knees and head ‘between hands, in the dazed anguish of the tor- ment that throbbed his temples. Vague and cold light through the deckhouse © ports showed him as a rather heavy shouldered man in patched dungarees and worn down jackboots. It revealed his crisp set, chestnut ‘hair, tousled all awry, and—on the crown—blood stiff- ened. But of his face, hidden by well corded hands, nothing was visible. Some few dim figures lolling in bunks or on the wooden benches:at either side of the table cast hardly a glance at the suf- ferer. Incurious in their misery, they left him to his own. Presently the man perceived the slow roll of the ship, the slithering whisper of the sea. Mustering at least enough strength to look about him, he blinked with bloodshot eyes, saw his mates, their dirty canvas dunnage bags, a sea chest or two, dingily battered. - His forehead knit in webs of puzzlement. “What ship’s this?” he demanded in a dry, hoarse voice barely louder than a whisper. “‘What’s her name and where bound?” : No one answered. One of the men there present was a St. Pierre-Miquelon Frenchman who had scant English. One, a Swede who had little more; a third, the Russian Finn, constitutionally silent. Then there was a weasel faced Cockney, sucking at a limp cigaret; and near him a stolid, beaky nosed old Ger- man, his cropped hair gray as a badger, hands blue with tattooing, chin fringed with a stubble of white beard. .A lump- ish, cross eyed negro blent with the deeper shadows of the forecastle. Only one man of all this flotsam appeared to take heed of the sufferer; and this one was perhaps most wnprepossessing of all—an East Side gangster and gunman, now nursing bruises recently acquired. This gangster had found it prudent, after a Chatham Square battle, to stand comnlicloooks.com