Adventure Magazine Cover — page 51: what you’re looking at

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

Yellow Men and Gold a minute ago—you are as well able to stand showers of corrosive sublimate.”’ He compressed his lips tightly, but still sneering, ‘‘ Jim,” said he, “I don’t know a bolder talker than yourself when you’ve got your friends to back you. But yester- day, when you were visiting us, you kepta civiler and less bloodthirsty tongue in your head!” I crimsoned to my eyes with shame; for what the man said was perfectly true. “But with me,” said he, “‘it’s different. And among friends or enemies you'll find me the same. When I tell you to your faces” —his face became gradually frenzied with rage—‘“‘that I’m going to cut the heart out of every mother’s son of you, I mean it! And as for the mother’s daugh- ters among you—ask that Spanish thing there what I did to her!”’ “Mister Carrol,’ said Bessie quietly, “among Chinamen a white flag protects its bearer as surely as an army. But the amount of honor that an outcast woman can claim is so small and valueless to her, that if you don’t get out of this ship in about three shakes of a lamb’s tail—I’ll fix you! And [ll fix you good!” Her temper had risen, and she glared into the man’s face and walked slowly toward him, her arms akimbo and her chin thrust sharply forward and up. Carrol clenched his right hand. He was brave, and no mistake; for he must have known that he had but to strike the woman to be literally torn to pieces the next instant— and I think he meant to strike her. Jili’s crooked knife was already flashing in his hand, clean once more and sharp. I sprang between Bessie and Carrol. “Carrol,” said I, “certain things have been said to you that you may as well put in your pipe and smoke. My God, man, think of Todd!” He must have done so, for his face changed on the instant from crimson to ash. “T guess you're right, Jim,” he said mildly. A moment more and he had gone over the side and was being ferried ashore. CHAPTER XXIV TERMS ‘ X YELL, as the saying is, we sat down to wait, and felt pretty sure of our affair. Before Carrol had stepped from the boat to 4 615 the landing the rain was once more descend- ing in torrents. You may lay it against me that I was not unduly moved with the thought of human beings succumbing inev- itably to exposure, and so near at hand. But I was not. The island and its transient inhabitants seemed very far off. Do you, for instance, when you read ofa terrible famine in distant India really take the matter to heart? I think not, for it is only a rare and a very morbid imagination that can picture sufferings beyond the seas with sufficient vividness to be troubled by them. Can you not pass a city hospital with laughter and jest? Are you in the least affected, though you fling them a thought, perhaps, by the sufferings that are going on within? You do not hear the screams, nor smell the ether, nor feel the passing of souls. Tf all the world’s death-beds and tortures came near enough, you yourself would die of pain. But a brick wall, the roof of a house, the width of a street, keep you in blissful ignorance. How much more, then, the width of a flord, and the rocky heights of an island. It was harder to sit down among our own dead in the cabin to eat a meal, than to think of Blake in his last throes. And, after a meal or two, that feeling of wretched dis- comfort passed and I grew used to leaning against Chang’s coffin and watching a deal of fan-tan eat up my resources. Have I said that I was made to gamble furiously aboard the Shantung? Alas, it is so! And having not a penny of my own in the world, I was a constant recipient of forced loans. Our stakes, it is true, were wondrous small; but the excitement was as great as among men playing for thousands. At checkers and backgammon I could hold my own; and I was beginning to see the inner workings of fan-tan; chess, however, was not a contest but a series of presents from me to the adversary, though I once pushed Lichee very close fora rubber. Bes- sie played cards with astonishing good luck and very little skill; Carmen played well and unluckily; but the only heavy winners among us were poor Chang, who was dead, and Lichee. The child played with real genius; and it was a great feather in the cap of any one who could worst him. He knew every card in the pack; at whist he seemed to know by intuition, after a lead or two, exactly what hands were held by the various players. COMMICLOOCkKKS. CO