Adventure, July 1, 1928 — page 79: what you’re looking at

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

THE ROARING HORN 73 not upon the order of his going but to go at once. Fate had led him to Stapleton. The China Girl had offered a haven of refuge. He had made shift to stow away aboard of her; but so clumsily that, hardly half an hour after the watches had been chosen, Leadspitter had discovered him. Hence these bruises on “The Dodger”, as was his elegant title in his own world. “What ship and where bound?” re- peated the man with the bloodied poll. Still no reply. ‘Well, are you all deaf and dumb?” The Frenchman shrugged indifferent shoulders under his striped “‘gansey’’. The Finn lighted a pipe of willow wood ingeniously carved, yawned with yellow fangs and fell a-smoking. **A fine bunch of swabs you are!” the sufferer gibed, sweeping them all and severally with his contempt. “If I had you aboard o’ my own ship, I'd soon have something out 0’ you!” “Ah, don’t get shirty!” the Cockney retorted. “Gorblimey, it’s only another billet in sail, an’ wot odds4vhere to? Too soon to be funkin’ it, mytey. We all got to stick it now!” The shanghaied man blinked stupidly at the Londoner,* half seeing a pale face with reddened eyelids and with a sickly corn colored wisp of mustache. Then he perceived a water bucket on the table, and his eyes brightened. Water! Ah! He got up unsteadily, staggered a bit— for he had not yet got the feel of the ship, the slant of the deck—and seizing a tin cup drank deep gurgling draughts. He drank still again, with the greedy thirst of fever. **’Ot coppers, eh?” laughed the Cock- ney. “You eyn’t the only one. Perish my pinkies, no! Well, drink ’earty. Though we'll all need more than water, ’fore we’re through with this. ’Cos we’re goin’ round the ’Orn, that’s wot. An’ if you eyn’t never been round the’ Orn, Gawd ’elp you. That’s all I got to say!” “‘What?”? demanded the shanghaied one. “Horn? Round the Horn? No! Impossible!” “Fact, mytey! An’ you can’t ’op it now, so it eyn’t no use to grouse abaht it an’ that!” “My great God!” gulped the man, and turned toward the port door. “The Horn! No?’ HE BREATH sawed between his parched lips as he jerked the door back, admitting a gust of raw and damp air to the stifling fetor of the deck- house. “Hey, you!” snarled the gangster, with a garnishment of oaths. “Shut that door, you poor boob!”’ The man turned, with hard knuckled fist. “Look out I don’t shut you!” he menaced. The gunman’s eye gleamed from the shadows, but he ventured no retort. A moment the shanghaied man narrowly measured him with a look that, for all its inflamed pain, held steady; then he stooped out of the house and banged the door to. “Damned cattle!” he spat. “If I had “em on mine, I’d clew and cat ’em quick enough!” Reviving a bit Galles the stimulus of the fresh, salt edged breeze, he made way to the high bulwark just abaft the break of the forecastle head, and stood a minute looking off to leeward. Little enough information he got there. Boiling tangles of foam, gray rolling surges sullenly fad- ing into mists, told him nothing save that —though how he had come there, not at all did he know—he was already far at sea. Only the immense and primal soli- tudes of the regardless ocean met his gaze. “The joke’s on me, all right,”” he mut- tered. “If I was a booze fighter I could understand it. But—” He raised a hand to his head. A spe- cial focus of pain there, and the feel of clotted bléod, wakened nebulous mem- ories. “Batted me, by gad!” he exclaimed. “Ah, now—” Vaguely as through these same mists shrouding the Atlantic, some colorable comnicloooks.com