Adventure Magazine Cover, October 10, 1921 — page 156: what you’re looking at

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

146 your good fortune on the seas—how your luck has passed into a byword. And we have heard other things.” ‘““Ay—a deal of lies, devil a doubt, as I could prove to you.” “T can not think why you should trouble to put yourself on your defense,” said she discouragingly. : ‘So that ye may think less badly of me than ye do.” “What T think of you is a very little matter, sir.’ “Can ye say that, now? Can ye say that, knowing as ye ‘must that it was on that. very aecount I was persuaded to ac- cept this cursed commission in a service I despise? Didn’t ye urge me with the plea that thus I might redeem the past? It’s little enough I was concerned to redeem the past save only in your eyes. In my own I’ve done nothing at all that I’m ashamed of, considering the provocation I received.”’ Her glance faltered and fell away before his own that was so intent. “I—I can’t think why you should speak to me like this,” she said with less than her earlier assurance. “Ah now, can’t ye indeed?” he cried. ‘Sure then I'll be telling ye.” “Oh, please! I beg that you will not.” There was real alarm in her voice. But he never heeded it. “Ye’ll remember that day, a fortnight since, when the three ships of the Jamaica fleet bore down upon me. What was it, d’ye suppose, that made me afraid to fight? As ye heard Wolverstone say, I’d faced heavier odds and come out victorious. Ye may also have heard him say that it was having you aboard that made a coward of me. And that was the truth, so it was. I couldn’t bear to think of the-harm that might come to you in the terrible fight there’d have been if I engaged them.”’ “‘I—I realized that; and I am very grate- ful. I shall always be grateful.” “Maybe, but if it’s also your intention always to think of me as a thief and a pirate, faith ye may keep your gratitude for all the good it’s like to do me.” A livelier color crept into her cheeks. “You misunderstand, she- said. “It isn’t that.” ‘What is it then?” quoth he, and added the question: ‘Lord Julian?” She started, and stared at him blankly indignant. Adventure “Och, be frank with me,” he urged her. ‘Twill be a kindness. Soit will.” ‘‘You—you are quite insufferable,’ she said, her chin in the air. “I beg that you will let me pass.” oe. He stepped aside and with the broad feathered hat which he still held in his hand he waved her on towards the house. “T’ll not be detaining you any longer, ma’am.”’ She moved to depart, then checked and faced him again. There was now a per- ceptible heave of the slight breast that faintly swelled the light bodice of gray silk. “That day three years ago,” she said, “when Don Diego Valdez raided Bridge- town, I saw things that I shall remember with horror to my dying hour, and I heard tell afterwards of others even more un- speakable. When I think of that what Valdez and his raiders did in Barbados then, you and your buccaneers have since been doing in a score of Spanish settle- ments, do you wonder that I—that I— desire as little as may be of your company whilst your new duties keep you in Port Royal?” Nor was that all she said. Having been driven, as she felt, to explain herself, she went almost to the very limits of candor. “Perhaps because in the old days I hon- ored you for an unfortunate gentleman, pitied you for your misfortune, and es- teemed you for the gifts you revealed and the fortitude with which you bore adversity, I am now the more readily moved to horror by the thought of what you have become.”’ Thus did she deal him, relentlessly, a death-wound to all His hopes. In what he said she afforded him reason enough for her aloofness; but his mounting jealousy preferred a reason other than the one she offered. Indeed, because she offered it so | fully, he accounted it no reason at all, but just a pretext. “Oh, madam!” he cried, and there. was mockery in the crisp voice. “Qui s’excuse, s’accuse. Ye’ll know French, no doubt.”’ “TI must know more than French to be able to guess your meaning. But it doesn’t really matter. The Peter Blood I once knew in Barbados, and esteemed, is dead, sir.” “IT am thinking that’s the truth,” he answered her, his bitterness increasing. ‘For it was yourself that killed him.” And in answer to her gasp and sudden stare COmiclbooks Cc C@