Adventure Magazine Cover — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

8 Adventure Captain McAndrew, and nonchalantly pur- chasing two Colt .45’s with which to pre- vent myself from sharing the captain’s fate. I guess the old freebooter spirit isn’t far below the surface in most of us, for I was never of a lawless nature, and yet, six days from my interview with old Mandarin Campbell, the only incident of all our drama of secret outfitting and furtive sailing capable of impressing me, was also the only incident which might be considered to bear any relation to the normal life I had lived heretofore. It occurred on the night before we slipped down the bay. Old Campbell, carried on board from his limousine by two Chinese servants, and followed by another whose hand seemed glued to his hip, had paid his momentous visits to the officers and was leaving the ship. The new captain, a thick-set Irishman named O’Day, was below in the engine- room, telling the chief engineer that the ship had a list, and that it must be due either to ill-trimmed bunkers or to slack water in the ballast-tanks; Fraser, the first officer, was on the bridge: and to the second officer, Burns, and myself fell the duty of seeing the owner to the gangway in due style. Burns and I, having formed a sort of alliance of youth, had been ashore together all afternoon, and had only come aboard a few minutes before old Campbell’s arrival. We were therefore as surprised as he was at the sight which met us on our way to the gangway ait. The bridge of the Khan-Do was built separate from the engine-room house, and between the two structures was an open deck-space of perhaps fifty feet, in the cen- ter of which was Number 3 hatch. A ter- rible place, could I have seen into the future! And even in the present, the theater of a most sensational event. Opening on this deck were two cabins; provided, when the ship was built, for the accommodation of occasional passengers. In each of them the light was on, and in each of them a passenger was calmly un- packing. To make the astonishing event still more so—while the occupant of the port room was apparently an old man, the pas- senger in the starboard cabin was undubit- ably a young girl. The deck, lit by a cargo-light, was filled with Chinese seamen, attending to the bat- tening of Number 3 hatch. Regardless of the fact that any one of the blue-bloused workers might be the assassin appointed for him, old Campbell clapped his hands sharply, and, when the bearers had set down his chair, sat staring at the two lighted doorways in silence, as if speechless with rage. I noticed that his two servants, and the silent. gunman behind, closed around him, in readiness for orders; but it was to me he spoke when at last he found his voice. ‘‘What’s this?” he snarled, pointing with a trembling finger. ‘Passengers? Passen- gers? Passengers, you lily-faced pap- eating lot of fools!”’ “This is the first I’ve seen of them,” I said apologetically. “The first you’ve seen of them?” he roared, with a violence that seemed to shake his frail frame dangerously, ‘‘who in business is it to see them? Passengers —now! Fetch them to me. Where’s the captain? Fetch the captain.” ‘‘He’s below,” said Burns. — ‘Then fetch him from below,” shouted Mandarin Campbell. “And you, you Carter, bring me those passengers. Hop to it, curse your souls!” For all Burns or I could have picked him up and shredded him to pieces, the old man’s fury dominated us. Burns hurried away aft as if the devil were after him, and I was starting on my errand with a good deal more speed than dignity, when the port passenger saved me the trouble.. In silhouette, we saw him take a wide- brimmed hat off a hook near the door and crowd it carelessly onto his head. A mo- ment later, he stepped over the sill into the glare of the cargo-light, and leisurely picked his way through the litter of rope-ends and canvas until he stood before the chair in which Mandarin Campbell was writhing in anger. Arrived there, he folded his hands under the tails of a weather-beaten frock coat, leaned belligerently forward and stared Campbell in the eyes, over the tops ofa pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, put on very much askew. Taken as a whole, he gave the impression of having been built on the bias. The thin line of gray whisker which ran down one side of his face did not seem to match the thinner line which ran down the other. His thin, sharp nose had a distinct twist at its tip; and the almost invisible liné of his mouth slanted above his withered chin. The eyes he had fixed on the COMicaoo® S (©