Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

Sieh ALY Ada Ga . hy Ff 8 Adventure deeds to be done unless I tumble overboard and you jump in and pull me out, and that sort of thing’s always rather messy. But, by gad, Ward! Suppose Carl is right, and it is an old pirate ship! Why, man dear, nobody that I know has ever pulled up an old pirate ship. That’s something, at least. It isn’t done ordinarily, and it’s the things that are done ordinarily that are slowly boring me to an early extinction that threat- ens to make a tragedy of my fair young life.” And so Ward, even against his better judgment, had yielded. He had written the letters necessary to permit him to disappear for several weeks at least, and had sent Carl over to Sea View to mail them. And then, left alone with his saner thoughts, had come his bitter self-recrimination. An hour later the mechanician returned and hurried up to the tent, his eyes dancing with an excitement that fairly bubbled over. “Oh, Chief!” he cried. ‘“We’ve got it sure. We'll all be rich and famous. It’s the Golden Horn, and she’s so full of treasure everybody wondered how she ever floated anyway. She’s——” “Do you mind,” Ward interrupted cut- tingly, “do you mind telling me what the devil you are talking about?” “Why, the ship we’re going to pull up out of the ocean. I met an old fisherman today who knows all about her.”’ “Carl!” exclaimed Fenton. “Do you mean to say that you told him what we are planning?” “Aw, now, Chief! You know I wouldn’t do that. No; I just got talking to him and led the talk around to wrecks on the coast, and from that to treasure-ships. And he said that the Golden Horn was wrecked off the coast below here, away ’way back be- fore there was any United States, or any America, or anything. And nobody ever found her. She was loaded to the hilt with a king’s ransom or something like that, an “And, of course, you immediately de- cided it was the Golden Horn that we have discovered, and that we have succeeded in raising her, and that we are now all rich. What did you buy with your share—an automobile and a house on Fifth Avenue?” “Aw, Chief, quit kidding me. I’m just telling you what the fisherman told me, and he ought to know, because he was as old as Methu—Methusel. You know the fel- low I mean.”’ “Yes, I know him well. And I also know that we’ve got to get to work and crate the monoplane for shipment to New York, and get everything packed to establish camp down the coast. So quit romancing and get into your overalls.” “Gee!” mourned Carl. “Overalls and treasure-ships don’t go very well together, do they?” But, though Ward did succeed in making Carl work with all of his accustomed vigor, he could not stem the constant flow of en- thusiastic speculation that bubbled from the mechanician’s lips. It was Loder’s first opportunity to figure actually and actively in just such scenes as had stirred him in the movies, and in the style of literature that he preferred, and, apparently, he proposed to enjoy it. to the limit. By sunset they had crated the monoplane and bundled up the tent that had housed it, and by noon the next day the machine had been sent to New York, and the two tents, with all of their camping equipment, were aboard an automobile-truck bound down the flat and fairly level beach for an “‘ex- perimental camp,” as Ward explained to the ‘driver to still speculation and gossip at the resort, Fenton and Loder followed later in the big biplane, flying low, and waving a greeting to the driver of the truck as they passed him on the shore. Then they rose and swerved out to sea, circling a dozen times before Ward finally located the mysterious gleam under the water that had led them upon this quest. “Gee, Chief,” Carl complained when he saw it. ‘That don’t look like what I thought the Golden Horn was. Still, she’s so far under water you can’t tell, can you? Maybe it’s her, after all.” They flew back to the shore and came down lower, picking out a spot for the loca- tion of their camp, and then flying back to the laboring truck. Here Ward landed Carl to direct the driver, and alone drove the biplane back to the spot that was to be their headquarters. It took but a short time to unload and dismiss the truck, and erect the biplane’s big tent. That done, Ward set about fixing up their living quarters, while Carl built a fireplace and collected the wood for their cooking. In'their travels about the coun- try they had become experts at this kind of thing. In many places where they had 100 COME <S iGO