Adventure Magazine Cover — page 171: what you’re looking at

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

The Brass Dolphin we drank to him. The Cuttlefish was short handed at the time, and it was often hard for Larsen to get men. He looked us over without parleying; then he whispered to the bartender, and our fates were sealed. The next drink tasted funny. A great drowsiness presently overcame us. I suppose we fell asleep. in a corner of the bar— SHANGHAIED. The Cutilefish, | with all sails set, drifted slowly over the blazing surface of the Caribbean with soft ripplings and plashings. Up from the hold a thick stench of fish-slime, rotten bananas, and the stale reek of a broken whisky cask came to mingle with the steamy tar-smell of the deck seams. ; Against the capstan a muscular negro as black as a buzzard’s wing lounged and leared, chewing green tobacco. A mixed- breed Portuguese, with a bloated, pock- marked face, sat cross-legged, weaving a long splice with a marlin-spike. A third seaman leaned his head on massive tattooed forearms and slept; the blotched skin of his face was half-covered with a grey stubble of beard. These were our mess-mates. Dick Flynn, small and wiry, with a skin of tanned leather and the sharp eyes and features of a terrier, spat viciously over the rail and swore in three languages. The little schooner seemed hardly to move at all through the glaring heat of the doldrums; but that she moved we knew, for far astern, marking Cartagena and the opportunity Cartagena had meant to us, the great bulk of La Popa seemed slowly to fade and dis- solve in the febrile shimmer of the heat waves. The futile day wore on. Flynn sucked the habitual bulge of tobacco in his cheek and pondered malignantly, squinting his eyes in the glare that prevailed even under the awning tarp. There was no work to do. Larsen and his steersman remained abaft - the cabin. Farther and farther away Flynn and I were drifting from our big chance. Late in the afternoon Flynn turned to me with a sudden humorous gleam in his eyes. For several minutes he regarded me quizzi- cally, then his face cracked into a grin. “T don’t know whether I can work it or not,” he said, “‘but if I can itll be good!”’ “What will?” “Don’t know yet. Kind o’ figgering how to get back to Cartagena real quick. Before 165 the expedition starts out and loses us.” “You’re crazy!’’ “Tt zs kind o’ risky,” Flynn reflected. Then, grinning again, “But it sure would be good! I think I know this guy Nels. May- be not. But if I do He chuckled softly. “f don’t know what you’re hatching,” I commented, “but ;whatever it is, lay off! It sounds batty to me.” Then Flynn fell silent, and I thought no more of it for a time. That night Flynn got himself put on as night steersman, and for a moment I feared that he would try some such sure-death scheme as bringing the ship about during the night; but this only proved that I did not know Dick Flynn. You see, although Nels Larsen was a seaman, Flynn was another. Had I known what he really con- templated I would have had something to worry about. Next morning La Popa was below the horizon and out of our lives. When Flynn found a chance he drew me aside. For a moment he let a malicious glee come into his eyes. “T think I’ve got him,” he whispered from the side of his mouth. “Larsen?” I asked. , He nodded. I started to protest, for it seemed to me that Dick could only be rais- ing trouble. ‘“‘Never you mind!” he stopped me. watch.” He strolled away, squinting sharp eyes at the weather. ‘‘Change o’ luck,” he re- marked. ‘“‘We’re going to have a capful.” “Just FLYNN left me worried. What mA sun-struck form of suicide was the 2 man about? For several hours after our talk nothing happened. Nothing except that a few light puffs of air presently began making catspaws on the water, backing Flynn’s weather forecast. As it happened, one of those light air puffs gave the signal for the strange clash of wills that was about to take place. It all happened so quickly that not a man on the ship, outside of Flynn and Larsen, in the least understood what was going on. Larsen, barefooted, was sitting in the stern near the wheel. Flynn was lounging and chewing tobacco amidships, at the star- board rail. Across the same rail, a storm- coat of Larsen’s was slung out to dry. COMICOoOokSs Cc C@