Adventure, February 1917 — page 106: what you’re looking at

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

104 seeing: about this and that. morning’s. work quite a tonic. The inquiry about the papers produced nq particular fruit. If Captain Campbell liked to take the trouble of looking, it would He felt his ~ ._ be very good. of him. The official in charge of these matters didn’t know what was the proper method of procedure, but no doubt Captain Campbell would take every care of the property. } Captain Campbell did like the trouble; would take the care. There was no appar- — ent way of getting out to the schooner, and no boat available. The sailor walked round the island till he came to a dingey drawn up on the sand, called a native policeman to assist him in shoving her down, and rowed himself out through the green ‘water to the ship. No one on board. The Tagula swung _ idly at anchor in the tearing current of the Straits. The doors of the cabins were all open; nothing had been locked up. Campbell, with a frown at such irregular- ity—in an island where thieving was prac- tically unknown—entered the first cabin and set to work. SLADE did not think it wise to set about the business of provisioning the Black Snake immediately. He = = till he -had seen Campbell go up Hospital Hill before he went to the stores to give his orders. No onein Burns Philps’s or Whitten’s would see anything remarkable about his buying goods by the case and bag, but the naval man, knowing what he nuSy; might smell a rat. He had scarcely finished giving his or- - ders when he saw Campbell coming down the hill again, This was awkward. It would not do to have the store boys carry- ing off cases of meat and butter, benzoline, tins of biscuits and mats of rice, under Campbell’s very eyes. Slade told them to wait till he sent for the stuff, and went back i to the hotel veranda. Passengers from the steamer were all over the place. She was to sail before dusk —Slade had taken care to ascertain that; ~ he did not want to have her wireless at the immediate service of Campbell—and the travelers who had ventured tremblingly up from Sydney and Melbourne to have a peep at terrible New Guinea were asking for im- possible -articles of food and drink, and hunting unobtainable souvenirs all over the Adventure a « = ~ town, eager to make the most of their time. One rather vulgar-looking woman at- tracted his attention by staring at him as if he were one of the shows of the country, like Cape Nelson or the Suau Passage. She was middle-aged. She carried a sunshade and wore a veil, so that one could not dis- tinguish her features. Slade thought he had seen her somewhere before, a long time ago; thought she was rude to ‘stare as she did; and then dismissed the woman and her decency and respectability and evil- ness, out of his mind. He wanted to watch Campbell. He could not load his cargo un- til Campbell was out of sight again. Rather to his astonishment, he saw the sailor take possession of the dingey, row out to the Tagula, and disappear inside the ship: He did not trouble himself much about what Campbell’s possible business . might be; he saw his apy and made the most of it. Campbell was a good while on board the boat. Slade had brought the Black Snake close to Clunn’s wharf, and he busied him- self with loading his stores for the trip to Timor. It did not take long. In half an hour he had seen everything on board and dismissed the boys. But still Campbell stayed on, the Tagula, invisible. He came out at last, dropped into the dingey, and began rowing toward the Burns Philp jetty, very fast. Slade looked at him through the windows of the launch, won-. dered mildly what he had been doing, and laughed not at all mildly at the thought of the way Campbell was going to betricked that night. His sense of humor, too, was tickled by the idea of eloping with Edith. He hummed gaily and not too unmusic- ally, as he moved about the launch, exam- ining this and that. There was a long and somewhat risky voyage ahead; it would not do to break down or run short of anything. The light sank toward the sea. The steamer hooted twice, three times, four times, and was away. He saw her going out through the Straits, a black spit against the reflected red of the east. _Westward, the sun went down in a flare of fierce color like the explosion of a blast furnace; theskies seemed to blare and shout their blood-reds - and thunder-purples. The sea, dead, oily calm, heaved in interlacing rings of flame. Slade sat in the cabin of the launch, wait- ing till dinner-time should clear the street of people. The wild spirit of the adventurer MiGaoOo <S (CO) =) (C@)