Adventure Magazine Cover — page 46: what you’re looking at

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

38 “T’ll fix up a plan to make him blubber like a baby,’ Gedge told Filson. “T’ll fetch him to his black knees, blast him! He can’t be around me and give me that cold, smooth eye of his. He’s sticking it out because he knows that’s what drives me into a fury.” And as the days passed, his desire to have revenge became an obsession with him. Once when the Seeker lay becalmed under a flaming sky, and a pitiless sun was fairly cooking the tar out of her deck-seams, Gedge hit upon a scheme. The cabin was like a furnace, and a sensible skipper would not have asked a cook to keep up a fire in a : etree) PHILIPPINE CHINA USS poISLANDS ae Bat SEA 160° 140° the galley that day. But Gedge kept Pete at his cooking, getting ready various dishes till noon. “Heat will break his spirit,’’ the skipper boasted to Filson. Pete’s sleeping-quarters were in a tiny closet-like cabin just off the galley. But there was no door between. In the early afternoon Gedge made Pete lie down on the shelf of a bunk—and shut the galley door which led into the main cabin. Then the captain built up a prodigious fire and got Adventure out. And Pete was all but baked by the terrific, stifling heat. Gedge, stripped to the waist, entered the galley at intervals and replenished the fire. Between times he had buckets of water thrown over him. Outside on deck the hot planks were being drenched with sea water to give relief from the blinding heat of the sun. “Do you find this weather suited to your black hide?” asked the grinning Gedge, as he looked in on the cook. “T can stand it, sir,” replied the tortured Pete. “Say it’s hot, and maybe I'll let up,” said Gedge finally when he saw that the cook had no idea of whining. “T’ve seen it hotter, sir,” gasped Pete. “The trouble with you is, you belong in jungle!” growled Gedge, and gave up. Filson was worried. That evening he took occasion again to warn the skipper. “That black boy’ll git you before he’s shut of the schooner, sir,” he told Gedge. “T don’t like the look in his eye, sir.” “Git me?” said Gedge. “All right, let him try it. But Ill bet that before we make our landfall for Tangeru, [ll find his weak spot—just what will make him squeal.” But in the next few days Gedge did noth- ing much to torment the cook, and affairs were running along smoothly aboard the Seeker when she made land dead ahead one morning—the coast of the island of Tangeru. The skipper hauled in close to land, which surprized Filson, for the town of Tangeru was to the south of a long and mountainous peninsula. At first Filson presumed that Gedge had missed his proper landfall. But as they drew in toward shore, Filson 2ogrealized that the skipper was not in any particular hurry to get into port and deliver the schooner. Just before sundown Captain Gedge sailed the Seeker into a little bay, and an- chored in eight fathoms. At once there was a clamor of voices in the jungle-clad hillsides, and the dull booming of gongs. Proas slipped out of the river up in the toe of the bay and paddled out around the schooner, though the natives were wary and did not approach her closer than what they supposed to be pistol-shot. ‘Those are a bad lot, sir,”’ said Fil- son nervously to Gedge. “I don’t think GOMIIGooOo S C@ iin