Adventure Magazine Cover — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

4 Adventure Avary’s invitation. Horton, broad-shoul- dered, broad-faced, resembling a bulldog, had known what was in the wind. Avary looked to him to lead the response to his proposition when he plumped it out. He took his bandanna handkerchief and wiped off the wet smears of liquor from the table-top. They watched him with the minute attention of a conjuror’s audience. His glib tongue had fed their imaginations, appealed to their gross appetites. Now the movement of his hand held them hypno- tized, as surely as the chalk-mark down the beak and along the floor trances the stupid fowl. ‘““Morgan was the greatest of them all!” said Avary, putting away his handkerchief, dipping the tip of his forefinger in his wine, holding it poised, using the arts of a street- corner fakir to create suspense and maintain their attention. ‘“There were others who made their fortunes on the Spanish Main— Pierre le Grand, L’Ollonois, Montbars, Lewis Scott, Bartelemey—but Morgan was Chief of all the Brethren of the Coast. ‘Since he died the Caribbean is an empty field, raked and gleaned down to the stubble. Now the Spaniards transship across the Isthmus or come round through the Straits of Magellan, and a buccaneer has a hard time to buy powder, let alone a chance to burn it. Tortuga is deserted. “The French are harrying the Spanish on the west coast, smuggling off Peru. That is why we are here in a Spanish harbor, part of a Spanish convoy and expedition against the French smugglers—because the dons can no longer fight their own battles but must call on us and the Dutch, under the Treaty of Ryswick, to help them. : “T like it not. I tell you frankly it goes against my grain to fight for a Spaniard. Why, look you, on the Main, Englishman, Dutchman, Frenchman, were all dogs to be - hunted down by the dons, to be put to the torture, to be burned at the stake. The Spaniards robbed the Indian, enslaved him, made him dig for gold and dive for pearls, and they claimed all the Islands of the Caribbees for their own until the buc- caneers began to take a share—since they were not offered one. ’Tis not so overlong since the time of the Armada for us to re- member how they ached to conquer England. And now they ask our aid and we give it to them—faugh!”’ , HE SPAT on the floor, rinsed out = his mouth with wine, redipped his forefinger and began to trace a crude chart on the mahogany. — “Here is Spain,” he said, making a cross on the coastline of his map, “and here is . Corunna where we lie. This is our course in the wake’ of Magellan, through his perilous straits, if the wind is fair; or round the howling Cape Horn, then long leagues up the western coast, following the trail of Drake. But not as he did, harrying the Spaniards, loading the hull of his ship with gold and silver and jewels until it was in- deed well named the Golden Hynde. “We are to fight smugglers. There’s no prize money. Its owners take all and give Jack a tot of rum. I’ve read the articles. The Bristol merchants who have found our two ships, the Dutch burghers who own the two from Holland, the Span- iards here take all the profit from the over- hauled smugglers that is to pay for the out- put. We do the fighting. ‘“‘Now then.” He wiped out South America, relined drying Spain and swiftly outlined the continent of Africa, the island of Madagas- car, the Arabian gulf and the coast of India. “T’ll show you where the Brethren of the Coast have gone,” he went on. “Where there are bones“with flesh on ’em and good marrow for the sucking. ‘“Here’s where they rendezvous—on Mad- agascar. Here’s where they live like kings, dressed as kings and their women dressed as queens. -Slaves to wait on ’em, rare liquor to drink, rare food, rare revels. Then to sail out and swoop down upon Moor and Arab, on the Portygees, on ships from India. Gold dust, ivory, bar silver, diamonds, pearls and_ rubies, sequins, ~ slaves! “Listen. Since we were boys, in the last score of years Captain Misson took two hundred thousand pounds from a dhow off Zanzibar. Did ever Morgan equal that? There was Captain John Bowen of the Speaker who took eighty-four thousand sequins—the same as _half-guineas—from one prize, and twenty-two thousand pounds from another, a Moor. “Captain Tew, who sailed with Misson; divided three thousand pounds to each man of his crew. Captain White of Plymouth divided four thousand. There were Fly : COMMICLOOOkKS (E@