Adventure Magazine Cover — page 48: what you’re looking at

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

328 There was a moment’s silence—I suppose as the heavy box rested on the rail-top; and then Hop-see-Long shouted another command. With a grinding noise, the case slipped outboard over the rail. From below came a sullen, mighty splash. An instant later, the case to port creaked, groaned, and was gone. And, as if my lease on life had been limited to the duration of our peril, the glow of the fire died from my eyes, the sobbing of May-sing from my ears, and I lapsed back into illimitable blackness. IX I WAS in a strange cabin, whose port, blazing with the cooler sun- shine of a northern latitude, was not over the bunk, as my cabin port had been. It was opposite to me; and sil- houetted against it was the head of a man. He was reading a book; as I stared at him he glanced up, bringing his face into the light. It was O’Day, and he stepped forward and took my hand. His head was still bandaged. Suddenly I saw tears start to his eyes. “Thank God!” he said. “Where are we?” I asked. “In Sylvia Parsons’ old cabin,” said O’Day, “‘you’ve been delirious and knows what, and we didn’t think you were coming through. You’ve woke up just in time to see us enter ’Frisco.”’ “But May-sing,” I asked, “where is she?” “Now, you want to keep calm,” said O’Day; “it’s all right. She went back on the launch with her father. Lie still! gine amg But before she left, she went to him, right before us all, and had a long parleyvoo in Chinese: and finally the old man went and looked at you as you lay there, and sort of smiled, and told me where he lived in the mountains.” I closed my eyes. Adventure “But when they were leaving,” O’Day said protestingly, “the girl went over and patted your cheek and said, ‘Oh, tell him to come soon.” What more do you want than that?” I opened my eyes again. Somehow it seemed to me that the way back to China, though it led through jobs, and money- making, and all the complications of civi- lization, would not be arduous. And later events proved I was right. I was already doing well for myself, a year later, when Uncle Norman left me that astounding hundred thousand dollars. O’Day leaned over the bunk and sur- veyed my face critically. “Ym going to call the doctor,” he said. “You look kind of flushed to me.” . I grasped his great hairy paw and held it. I didn’t want crusty old Parsons break- ing in on the vision I was having of May- sing; a little golden maid in her bright silks. O’Day ran a perplexed hand through his hair. “You’ve lost an awful lot of blood,” he said doubtfully. And then: ‘We’re all pretty well shot up. You know, all the way home me and Fraser and the number one Chink have been standing watch and watch. Good job Hop-see-Long left his first mate with us. Burns is too knocked out to do anything but lie in his bunk and hold hands with Sylvia Parsons. I bet it’ll be a long time before any of this ship’s company go back to China after another treasure! What’re you smiling at?” | was smiling at the dream of May-sing. I would go six hundred miles up the Yangtze to Hankow, and take horse into the moun- tains until I came to some old_ palace perched on a slope above the river; and there she would be—— ‘“Nothing—only you'll lose your bet,” I said. “Eh?” grunted O’Day, as the door opened and the doctor came in. “About not going back to China after another treasure,’ I told him. ‘I am!” GOMIIGooOoO S © iin