Adventure Magazine Cover — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

The Cook in a gesture of disgust, stepped to the little cash-register and rang it with a sharp clang. He drew out some money and counted it. “T pay you to the end of the week,” he said softly, and handed over the money. “T think you never will leave me, and now you go with this murdering sailor. I say he will kill you.” Pete lifted his shoulders in a careless shrug. “That may be true,” he said. Joe—I need a change.” “Then when you come back, your job is good with me,” said the Greek and thrust out his hand in forgiveness. The cook grasped it and then moved around the end of the counter toward the door. He opened it, paused an instant as if he realized that he was making a mistake which he would regret. “So long, Joe,” he said, and swiftly de- parted, bent forward under his bundle. The Greek stood in the window and watched Black Pete cross the Embarcadero and disappear into the fog in the direction of the hazy outline of the bare poles of a schooner sticking up out of the enveloping murk. FOR days the Seeker sought the j sunsets that eluded her over the horizons ahead; for nights she drove over a moonlit sea, southing, southing into warmed winds while the stars grew larger, and new constellations reeled overhead, and the islands swimming past threw up their fronded peaks and their mottled sides, thick with the fecund foliage of the tropics. Captain Gedge was happy. He had some one upon whom he could spill the spleen of his meanness. Black Pete, patient and willing with his work, was but a play- thing all this time for the moods of the skipper, who was often in quarrelsome humor. Yet Pete never, by so much as the quiver of an eyelash, showed any resent- ment of Gedge’s insults and abuse. “You're a of a smart nigger,” said Gedge one day as he sat at the cabin table and Pete was clearing up after a meal. “You thought you’d ship with me just to show you didn’t fear me. Well, before this cruise 1s over you'll be afraid of me all right.” “T am afraid of you, sir,” said Pete. “Y’m scared, true I am, sir.” “Not half what you will be,” 99 promised 37 Gedge with a grin. ‘TI know your kind— think you’re good as a white man because you've got half a white man’s brain. Buta white man’s civilization is too good for you, Pete.” “Maybe I’ve got some white blood,” said Pete. “I’m not sure, sir. I don’t see that it does me any good, sir.” “Don’t argue with me!” cried Gedge, thumping the table. “I told you white man’s civilization is too good for you!” “I’m agreeing with you, sir. But I say it this way—I’m not good enough for the white. man’s civilization. Is that my fault, sir?” Gedge squinted at him thoughtfully. “Oh, is that so?’ he sneered. ‘You think, eh? I’d have you know I’ll do the thinking aboard here. You’re one of the educated kind, and you think you know how to hold your temper. Hold your temper with that!’ and he hove a_half-empty bowl of stew—bowl and all—into the black cook’s face. Pete staggered back, his hp cut and his eyes filled with the stew, which also cov- ered his front. He cleaned up the mess but said nothing. As Gedge sat and grinned at him, Pete continued to be the same calm, stoical, docile black he had been from the first night he had gone aboard the Secker. He finished-his work and hid away in his galley. Filson got down into the cabin in time to see Pete cleaning the floor, and to under- stand what had happened. And when Pete was gone the mate warned the skipper. “He'll let a knife into you, sir, if you don’t watch out. He’s one of the quiet kind—treacherous, you know, sir.”’ ‘“That’s what I can’t stand, his quiet!” raged Gedge. “Don’t press him too far, sir. You never know what a cook will do if he gets off his nut.” “T’ll press him to the breaking point,” growled Gedge, plowing his fingers through his long hair. “Tl think up something that’ll make him turn and fight.” That was an end of it for the time, but as the Seeker pushed farther into southern waters, the captain brooded sulkily over the fact that Pete preserved his same calm and self-possessed demeanor. Gedge seemed to spend his time devising methods of tormenting Pete which should make the black cook beg for mercy. COIN Clooolkks C@