Adventure Magazine Cover — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

34 alleyways and make sure of taking a few of them with us,” he said. ‘Come on!” Groping our way to the ladder we told Doc Parsons the plan and slid down the steps to the deck. May-sing came down after me; Sylvia Parsons waited for Burns, and QO’ Day left last. As he started down the ladder, there was a thud on the bridge, and another kerosene barrel flared up. “Hurry!” he said, coming down the rest of the steps with arun. ‘“They’ll be on us when they see we don’t take any notice. Get the doors off those cabins. Quick.” Mackenzie and two of his juniors ran up, each with a revolver in his left hand and a huge wrench in his right. Using the wrench-handles as crowbars, and O’Day’s huge strength, we burst from their hinges. the doors of the cabins in which Sylvia and her father had traveled out, and jammed one diagonally across each alleyway leading from forward. As we worked, forcing them as tightly as possible into place, and praising God for the narrowness of the passages, we could see the crew standing on the forecastle in the glare from the bridge, revolvers ready for any who should attempt to extinguish the flames. No one fired at them though they were perfect targets. Ina few seconds at most they would know we had left the bridge, and be on us. We wanted all the time at our disposal to strengthen our fortification. With the materials at our command, we could not hope to do more than check their advances for a moment. “Ready?” called O’Day from the port side. The woodwork of the bridge was begin- ning to blaze; suddenly we heard the Chinese voices forward raised in evident argument as to whether to attack now or to wait. After a moment the chatter died down and one dominant voice continued briefly—giving orders, by its tone. “Leader say to attack now,” May-sing at my side. ‘“O Car-ter!”’ We must have looked a ghastly company, lined up there against the white steel wall of the engine-room house, our worn faces lit up by the red glare from above, our eyes fixed on the black mouths of those alley- ways. Burns and I had taken rifles and given our revolvers to the girls; there would be time, if the Chinese rushed us, for one volley; sobbed Adventure and then it would be hand-to-hand work in which the rifle-butt would be the man’s weapon. O’Day, trembling all over as he had trembled with rage in the Tong dungeon, stood on the center of the hatch, his rifle already grasped by the fore end. Suddenly he turned his blood-stained face around to us with a roar. “Ready!” heshouted. “They’re coming!” INCREDIBLE as it may seem to persons acquainted only with the aa simplex mind of the Occident, the howline devils who now surged up to our barrier had foreseen just such a moment as this, when a second might decide the fight; - and, leaving the rifles in the chart-house racks with a shell in each breech, they had drawn the charges. Our three rifle-bullets should have smashed into the group as they halted to climb the barricades. Instead, the firing- pins fell with dull clicks; and, had not O’Day been ready with his clubbed rifle on the hatch-cover, the attackers would have been among us before we could reverse our weapons. As it was, the line of yellow faces halted for a moment at the end of the circle over which the captain was swinging his club; and then, with a shout, Mackenzie and his engineers sprang forward, and Burns and I joined them. But for this chance to take the initiative, the battle could not have lasted a minute. Four of the Chinese, as if warned that he was the most dangerous of us, surrounded O’Day. Mackenzie and a junior—Mac- Whirter had fallen with a bullet in the shoulder—had rushed half a dozen blue- clad figures into a whirling hand-to-hand at the mouth of the port alley; and Burns, the doctor and I had the rest upon us over by one of the cases of ‘‘machinery.”’ The gold that had brought us to this pass was right in the center of the catastrophe— as malignant as ever; for Burns, stepping back from the sweep of a fid that would have spattered his brains on the deck, stumbled over one edge of the case, fell, and would have been knifed before he could rise had not Sylvia Parsons sent a bullet into the cruel yellow face that was bending over him. | I remember driving the butt of my rifle into another face that sprang up before COMmicasoo S (© iin