Adventure, July 1, 1928 — page 82: what you’re looking at

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

76 . GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND if you don’t know, I can tell you. Lan- yard knots of the lower rigging! What I’m talking about now is my uncle, and—” “‘Hell’s bells!” the captain interrupted, his voice fining down to a snarl of poison- ous menace. “Harkee, now!’ And he drew a step nearer on the snow slushed deck. “If you ain’t got sense enough to save your skin while there’s a chance, I’ll soon show you what kind of a breeze you've hit, you scruff! All I know about you is two things. One is—”’ “But, I tell you—” “One is, if your uncle was Henry Ford or the Prince o’ Wales, it wouldn’t be worth a hoot in Tophet to you, aboard o” this ship. Other thing is, I reckonize your face, though you don’t reckonize mine.” “You know me, do you?” “Do I, you skungeon bucket? I'll say I do! Three year ago, I got in a little argu- ment with a cop on Atlantic Avenue, Boston. I fisted him proper, and I’d of got clear with it, too, only for you!’ “You? You’re the—” “Yes, I’m the man you tripped up, you son of a flea! I lost part o’ my beauty and my cash, too, in the bobbery that follered. So yqu’re owin’ me somethin’ afore this here voyage is through up. I’m goin’ to collect it, too, with int’rest. You give me half a chance, by Godfrey mighty, and [ll knock your skull to jelly for two pins! So now you know. Get along forrard with you, and don’t you cross my hawse again, you whelp!” The muscles of the shanghaied man stiffened. He opened his mouth to speak again, but Bohannon’s fist caught him fiush on the curve of the jaw, with a crack like the kick of a mule. Stunned, he reeled backward over the rail. He hung there a second, then dropped to the top of the water-tank and lay inert on the iron. Leadspitter clumped down the ladder, plucked Tyson from the iron tank, and, while Bohannon sucked his pipe and cursed, dragged the insensible body to the forward deckhouse. He jerked back the door, heaved Tyson in like a sack of potatoes and slammed the door shut again. “Round one!” quoth the mate, and dusted off his hands, and laughed. CHAPTER III “Boat anoy!” PLAIN of slow heaving glass, ruf- fled only here or there by cat’s paws, the sea stretched to vague shimmering afternoon horizons of heat. A sea of luminous and melting turquoise that was, of ultramarine and lapis-lazuli, patched with jasper and malachite and golden pulsing absinthe all a-shimmer under skies of glamourous and phantom blue that overarched the undulating play of color. Under the burnished drench of a merci- less tropicsun—a broadcast rain of molten gold—the China Girl now lay almost be- calmed. There in 53° 8’ West, 190° 14’ North, some eight hundred miles almost due east of Porto Rico, she was making only slow headway. What little breeze fitfully whispered abroad upon the sea was mostly “up and down like a dog’s foreleg’, in sailor parlance. Baffling light airs hardly stirred the courses and topsails now hanging from the jackstays, her summer suit that had replaced the heavy weather canvas under which the ship had cleared, and that barely gave her steerage-way. As the China Girl rolled gently in the idle swell, her reef points lazily rippled. Sleepy weather. | Captain Bohannon would have done better to have made almost for the Canaries, there to have picked up the northeast Trades, then to have hauled his wind aft and to have driven nearly due south. But he had had his own ideas; and now the ship lay nigh becalmed, to the souring of his temper—were that pos- sible still more—and the sullen weariness of all hands. Leaning over the quarter rail, Bohan- non stood in dirty shirtsleeves and smoked with staccato puffs that betrayed hisanger. comnlicloooks.com