Adventure Magazine Cover — page 82: what you’re looking at

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

646 shore by the island, a solitary traveler’s fire eleamed fitfully. The traveler was ex- tremely disgusted with his situation; he had been intended by nature to be the most gre- garious of men, and circumstances had made him an Ishmael on the track. This was his second night away from home, and the pros- pect of the road, which had seemed to him free and independent and glamoured with the romance of the bush, was now very, very dreary. Therefore when he saw the 77/pa moored to the bank and all hands, from captain to cook, cutting wood for the engine, he walked over to the workers, wishing to lend a hand and too proud to risk asnub. So he stood by while they worked, and would very probably not have spoken to them but for the fact that he saw a tall, spare, magnifi- cent old man bowing under the weight of a dead branch. “T’ll take that, daddy,” he said. “Daddy?” Stephen Been staggered with amaze- ment, and the weight fell on the traveler’s shoulders. WHEN the work was finished the Captain almost forced the young man to accompany him to the little saloon, where they drank a tot of whisky each. He questioned the young fellow ina kindly, inquisitive manner, which proved his interest and, little by little, he found that the traveler’s name was George Garth, that he had quarreled with his father, whom he said he did not like, and there was an end to the matter. He had set out from Louth two days before to walk until he met something to do. And then the Captain insisted on Garth’s remaining aboard, and he sent one of the gentlemen who were “working their pas- sage” for the swag by the new chum’s fire. Then he installed his friend in the best berth on the wheel-deck, and saw Garth, worn out with his unusual tramp, fall asleep as the Tilpa steamed down the moonlit river. That word “Daddy” from such a man had given Stephen Been the son of his love- less dreams and won the Samaritan forever. Next day Garth asked to be given some- thing to do, and the old man, who had very hazy ideas on the subjest, suggested that he ought to take stock. And Garth did so, and placed the Tilpa’s financial condition in such a light that the Samaritan thought his knife- Adventure notch style of bookkeeping might not be absolutely perfect after all. He broached the subject to the mate in the wheelhouse that evening. ‘‘Seems to me, Jim,” said he, “that the young man might’s well stay on an’ look after the bills —be a what’s it?”’ ‘““Supercargo,” said the mate shortly. “Yes, that’s it,” assented Stephen Been. ‘““Won’t do makin’ any more ’oles in the paddle-box.”’ ‘“That’sa fact. Ifyou chop it much more there'll be no starb’d sponson at all. Bime- by you'll have a ship made of holes.” 64, AND so George Garth became su- eet percargo, and the trade with the young women at the stations increas- ed amazingly, and the old man found the young one more valuable than he had dreamed, and loved him more dearly with the birth of each successive day. The affection was mutual. The old man was lovable, and then they had so much in common; both loved the river—that was everything. And Been showed the super- cargo the wonderful water-hens in the bend near Christmas Island, and told numberless stories of driving the steamer full speed ahead when the river was dangerously low because the banks were streets of fire, and of shooting the punt rope at Wilcannia when the stream was in flood—he sang, in his rough vocabulary, the epic of the rivermen. And when they passed a tortoise paddling and spluttering in an insanity of fear of the smoking bulk of the steamer, Been would remark that the terrapin was very like an old jew lizard he had known at Fort Bourke in ’74 and “that there jew lizard—he was a terror for santypedes an’ such like, an’ he once et half a pound o’ shin o’ beef at a sit- tin’, he did.”’ For his part, Garth was in paradise. The preliminary work of setting affairs in order being ended, he had nothing to do while the boat was between stopping places, and so he roamed over the steamer at his will, now in the wheelhouse, now on a sponson, then in the bows. With the first streak of the day the steamer’s whistle ran along the river reaches, and as she steamed away the nude figure of the supercargo appeared on a pad- dle-box—he dropped a bucket into the foam- ing wheel-wash, drew it up, and drenched himself with the contents. And after that, by the time he was dressed, the steamer GCOmiGcdooksEeo