Adventure Magazine Cover — page 134: what you’re looking at

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

128 Singapore and at his right hand, wrapped in a sense of gloom that gradually was communicated to these few rough adven- turers of an age that was dying, sat Mallow’s partner of yesterday, the huge bodied Frenchman, Jean Cartier, friend long tried, and up to this day, mate of the trading- _schooner Wraith. “Why do you go away, Wrecker?” he asked for the twentieth time. ‘True, the day of our sort is over and that is so all over the world, but here in the East least of all. There is still a living for the Wraith.” Old Mallow’s eyes glittered savagely. “Ves, Jean, a living—uncertain charters, filthy cargoes of Chinese fertilizers, vege- tables, the rag and tag of sea-dregs. No, by glory, the Wraith is not for that! Why, Jean—”’ his voice dropped as he swung around in bis chair and looked straight at the mate—‘‘don’t you remember the tight places when we called on her for speed, for stanchness, aye, man, for faith itself, and she never failed; she gave us all she had and it was royally given, by a royal ship. No, she carries no refuse. She fell to my share of what we had, old friend, to you went the dollars.”’ The Frenchman, rough, vicious, with sensibilities long believed calloused by the grinding necessities of a lifetime on the sea, found his voice breaking queerly as he said: “Vou have been a loyal friend, Wrecker, as stanch and true as the ship you command. Good luck to you and the Wraith.”’ From somewhere down the long table came the thud of a heavy fist and there thundered out into the smoke-filled room the doggerel song that lives on; in college drinking-places we hear it, in water-front bars, in the forecastles of ships, wherever men foregather, even to the gloomy shadows of prisons. And Captain Mallow drank deep and with arm around the mate’s shoulder joined with the rest— “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here.” Under the riotous layer of song and shout- ed yarns that were always interrupted, lay a deeper emotion, though unexpressed, a sense of sadness, almost of tragedy, for the little group of untamed men was thin- ning and John Mallow had carved a niche that they knew would stay empty after he was gone. They liked him for what he was, this American who had been one of them, who had traded with them, and who had Adventure freely smashed law after law in the earlier days; who had sailed his cherished Wraith where others at the time had not dared follow. They admired his daring, for they were daring; they approved his caution, for they possessed caution, but more than anything else, they all liked and some envied his record of truth. This had never been clouded. Dutch officials, English, to a lesser extent, Chinese, frowned officially on Captain Mallow, suspected him of every sort of illicit roguery that prevailed in the South Pacific, but personally they liked him. They recognized in him the adventurer, the fortune-hunter, a man defiant of ordi- nances that could be defied, but they saw in him no drifting ne’er-do-well, no sinister exploiter of the natives of the Islands, no liar, no thief. “Are you going to Frisco or the East Coast?” asked Cartier. “Gloucester,” said Mallow. “I am going to fish.”’ And being what they were, neither man saw any absurdity in the distinction that Mallow drew in favor of the Wraith when he refused to load Chinese fertilizer and yet would throw her headlong into the fishing- trade. “You see, Jean, she will still be in the game; out here we have had to race her time after time to her limit, in pinches where speed meant everything, where the closest obedience to her rudder was demanded, where master and mate and crew and ship were welded into one being—”: he broke off abruptly, a bit embarrassed at his own vehemence, then finished quietly—‘‘the Wraith must be like that, if she is to succeed among the fishing schooners of Gloucester. She will be like that.” , “Yes,’”’ said the mate, “‘I think she will.” “fi there, Wrecker, you and Frenchy lay off that girlish secrecy! Give some attention to your hosts, altogether now, boys— “Fail, hail, the gang’s all here.” Just before dawn the company left the table. One by one they wrung the hand of Wrecker Mallow. Jean Cartier said good- by at the door of the hotel. “You leave before noon?’’ “Ves; you will see me off?” “No,” said the mate, “I can not. It’s a heavy blow, Wrecker; good-by, partner. Good luck.” COmicloool< (C@