Adventure Magazine Cover — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

Yellow Treasure For one thing, it was sweltering hot, for the big electric fan blowing out of the port could not take the place of the night-wind that was making the bridge at least bear- able; then, its air was clammy with churned up cigar-smoke; and finally, each of the four men sitting around the captain’s table, seemed ready to fly at the throat of any of the others. _ The presence of. danger is said to draw men closer together, but at any rate, the approach of it seems to have just the oppo- site effect. O’Day, who had started the trip as a sort of genial Hercules, looked at me over his cards like a sulky dog looking up from a bone. Fraser and the doctor were glowering at each other, and the chief engineer, called in to make up the game, looked hot and angry. ‘‘Where is she?” asked O’Day. I told him the position—one hundred miles off the north mouth of the Yangtze- kiang; and then, as Mackenzie rose, moved toward the vacant seat. In an instant, the . doctor was standing up, pulling at Macken- zie’s arm as he moved off toward the door. “You’re a Scotchman, all right,’ he creaked, more unpleasantly than ever; ‘“‘you forget that you’re ninety cents in the hole, don’t you?” “Ah’m not,” says Mackenzie, looking at Fraser and the captain for confirmation. “‘Ah’m no’ in the hole a’ all.” “Do you back him up in that?” says the doctor, leaning over toward Fraser and OQ’Day belligerently. | ““Yes,’”’ says O’Day, as if he’d said the same thing before. ° The doctor threw the cards all over the floor. “Then you’re all thieves!’ he shouted, his childish fury contrasting oddly with his sparsely venerable whiskers and his sev- enty-year-old wrinkles. ‘“You’re thieving servants of a thieving master! This tub’s what you should be on—somewhere near old Mandarin Campbell, the king of the thieves. The thief who robbed the thieves!” O’Day sprang to his feet and with a sweep of his arm slammed the port shut. “Do you think you shut me up?” shouted old Parsons. “Do you think I don’t know? Do you think I’m not aware that you’re on this trip to reclaim the booty old Camp- bell hid out on his brothers, the Tae-pings? A fit job for such as you. A fit job!” The murderous folly of it—screaming out II the death-warrant for all of us in a tone that could be heard, closed port or none, by the Chinese quartermaster, as well as any Chinks that might be on the deck, held us paralyzed for an instant. Then I sprang forward, and as the doctor opened his mouth for another outburst, stopped his words with a fist stuffed between his jaws. He struggled furiously, but he was weak with age, and I had no trouble in holding him. It was as we stood there, O’Day and Fraser pale with the shock of it, and Mac- kenzie staring around the room as if he thought we had all gone mad, that the door was flung open again, and a Chinaman was hurled into our midst. After him, his knuckles bleeding where they had struck the Chinese, came Burns. | HE POINTED to the prostrate VSS) Oriental. == “Listening at the door,” he said, in a voice that indicated he knew what the man had heard. There was a dead silence for as long as it took O’Day to draw a deep breath. The peril had ceased to hang over us. It was with us. With the blow that had stunned the Chinese—he was already beginning to move feebly—Burns had brought our ad- venture to the stage of open fighting. And we all felt the better for it. “Mackenzie,” said O’Day, “get back to your engines. Fraser, take the bridge. Are you armed?” Fraser nodded. Shewne Mackenzie be- fore him, he went to the door. oe anything goes wrong with your en- gines, Mr. Chief,” said O’Day, “T’ll person- ally blow your brains out. Keep watch, Fraser, and if there’s any sign of trouble for- rard, fire a shot.” The door closed behind them. We four remained under the greasy electric light, ‘strangely grouped around the fallen Chi- nese. “Loose him,” says O’Day to me, stepping up close to the doctor. Rumpled as he was, the little medico stared up at the vast bulk of the captain without a tremor of fear. “You see what you’ve done, you cursed runt!’ growled O’Day. “Yes, I do,” said Parsons. O’Day looked into his eyes. “VYou’re a doctor,” he said softly, GOMIGoOO S © inn