Adventure Magazine Cover — page 57: what you’re looking at

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Yellow Men and Gold face, and he went white under the stare of her great accusing stag-eyes. “Tf T not kill heem,” she said, “that ver’ bad. When he break loose, and cut your heart out, you not like hear me say ‘I tole you so.’ That man poison, just lak snake. He wear that-a rope ’cause it suit heem; but he not have to.” She turned and went as suddenly and as silently as she had come; but her few words had blunted the edge of cheerful conversation. And Carrol in particular was badly scared by them. “T tell you,” he said, “I don’t like it. I was promised a safe passage to Rio, and I submitted to be bound. I demand either that these ropes come off, or that I be guarded night and day. I tell you, it gives me the chills to think of that revengeful hussy creeping in here some night and cut- ting my throat!” “Vou may be quite sure,” said I, “that anything of that kind will certainly be prevented.” ‘Quite sure’s not sure enough,” said he. “Well,” said I, ‘it’s the nearest sure you can be in this world.”’ “And to think,” said he, in the tone of one who has missed the short end of a hundred-to-one shot at the races, “that I could have killed her, one time in Lima, just as well as not; could have had the busi- ness hushed up, and never need have had this hanging over me! [I tell you it’s unpleasant, not to put it stronger.” THE next day dawned with watery sunshine and capricious breezes. ===3 We got up the anchor and stood down the fiord for the open stretches of Beagle Channel, and about ten o’clock had left the scenes of our desperate adventures behind. Looking astern, the great white blotches of the headland dwindled and ran together until they resembled once more a saucy schooner under full sail; and dwindled and shrank to a spot, to a pinhead, and vanished at last from our eyes forever. Of the various emotions displayed at this time Bessie’s was the most odd. For she was moved suddenly to tears, and clasped Lichee to her heart and fondled him, and finally pushed him away from her and ran into the cabin and sat for many hours among the coffins of the dead. 621 CHAPTER XXVI1 AT SEA AGAIN O RUN out of Beagle Channel, turn the corner, so to speak, and follow up the eastern coast of South America, embraced but the first principles of navigation; elim- inating a perilous repassage of Magellan, or the dangerous gales and seas of Cape Horn. We were now so rich that it mattered little in what port of the civilized world we should first anchor; let it only be the nearest and easiest to reach, and one from which trustworthy steamers sailed, or trains ran. But the troubles which such a course promised to prevent were inflicted upon us in other ways. Our venture was predes- tined to trouble; where navigation should have been easy it was made difficult by fog. And in comparison to Chang, Jili was no great sailor; instead of incurring dangers on the side of boldness, he incurred them by caution and procrastination. And instead of feeling his way northward through the fog, he stood day after day straight out to sea. We weathered a very wicked fifty-hour gale that never so much as lifted a corner of the fog; we came within an ace of running down an uncharted island; and we sprang aleak forward, which, though not an actual menace, obliged us to keep the pumps pretty active. And when at last fine blue sea- weather put in a tardy appearance, and our minds were at rest as to the ship’s position, nature, not yet ready to let us go scot free, visited us with the scurvy. Labor that was almost unendurable, and long continuance on a narrow, salty and not particularly nu- tritious diet, had its usual results; especial- ly the labor. For those who had worked the hardest were the first to fall sick; while those who had not worked at all escaped. The pas- sengers, or prisoners, continued in excellent health and spirits, with the exception of Carrol; and whatever it was that ailed him, it was not the scurvy; he seemed to suffer more from general languor and loss of appe- tite than from anything specific, and com- plained that his whole skeleton was out- lined in aches. The women had no touch of the scurvy, nor had Lichee; and my own case of it was more in the nature of a threat than a development. But the Chinamen, for what reason I do CORNICLOO© SoCO