Adventure Magazine Cover — page 86: what you’re looking at

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

650 modically, and between the spasms the en- gine drove the steamer down the stream with a frightful velocity. They were not caught by the dreaded wreckage—they caught it. FINALLY, at eleven o’clock, they reached the still water covering a tree- less plain and there they fanchored. That plain, although the Samaritan knew it not, covered Corona station. They breakfasted at noon, and the cap- tain was unusually jolly. *%:The loss of the barge did not matter much, he thought, with a curious smile on his face. He wouldn’t want it any more, but he was sorry for the boy’s sake, all the same. During the afternoon the wreckage be- came larger. It was not confined to tree and river débris now; fence-rails, boxes, furniture and, to show how far the water could penetrate, a cradle came bobbing and turning into the haven of the steamer. They found that the cradle, by virtue of its shape, was an ark of this deluge, the rescued being mostly snakes and tarantulas and scorpions and centipedes and all the insect horrors and creeping things which no living man may imagine. At four o’clock a hut came down, escaped from the current, careered wildly in the eddies, and then collapsed with a noise like the discharge of artillery against a tree which had so far been too strong for the flood. Then a minute later another hut, swimming high out of the water, ran down in midstream and then abeam of the T7/pa, suddenly shot athwart the current and collided with the same tree. But it did not go to pieces. A projection in the timber wedged it in the tree fork, and there it stood, exposing its bulk to the swirl of the deluge. Stephen Been and the mate and Garth looked at the arrested shanty, expecting it to break up. Suddenly the Captain exclaimed, “ if ;there ain’t aman on the thing!”’ Quite as suddenly he lowered the dingey, one of the two only boats of the Tzlpa, sprang into her, and pulled for the wreck before anybody fairly understood his intention. He had become a Samaritan again. He had forgotten his revenge at the sight of a man in danger; he had left a haven for the jaws of death. The man on the hut was still now. He had been waving his arms to the T7z/pa until Adventure _ he saw the boat put off to his rescue. The Samaritan pulled to the wreckage as if his own existence depended on his speed. His struggle to keep the broadside on to the boiling current was almost titanic, but at last he reached the lee of the anchored hut, and after fastening the dingey to a project- ing spar, swung himself into the tree. The castaway greeted him with a cry of joy. Stephen Been clambered on to the hut and straddled the ridge-pole, so that he was face to face with the man who had suf- fered the perilous voyage on the quaking building. And then the Samaritan Been became the Convict again. His face was transfigured —he looked at the wretch whose eyes were so close to his as a terrier might look at a rat. His face expressed an awful joy—the happi- ness of the strong, courageous devil who finds a coward devil in his grasp. The Informer noted that sudden change, and in the space of a thought recognized his old enemy and shrieked aloud. ‘So I’ve got you,” said Stephen Been very slowly, enjoying to the full Shaw’s ac- cession of fear. ‘“‘I knew I’d get you some- time.”” And then, with the snarl of a wolf, ‘“‘D’ye remember little Hutchins an’ Peter Wells, you dirty liar? Do yer? D’ye re- member Bendigo and Wood’s Point? An’ you're a swell now, are you? An’ asquatter an’ a J. P., an’ all—an’ ye’ve got a son who’d drown yer if he knew what y’are; and I’ve been playin’ a lone ’and-all me life. Through you, you dog; through you!” The Informer opened his mouth to shriek for mercy, but the roar of the water drowned his voice, and the grip of the Captain on his wrist made him dumb. | “Ym goin’ to leave ye here,” said Been again. ‘‘An’ it’s an easier death than I meant for yer—it’s an easier death than they’d:-agree to—they’ll ’ave ter content themselves-with it.” He spoke of ‘“‘them” as if they were in- deed men and not impotent shadows. The Informer made no answer—he was dumb with terror. ‘So good-by to yer,’’ concluded the Cap- tain. ‘May ye go to the hell ye sent those boys ter, an’ may ye meet ’em there!” He ceased and swung himself from the roof, but ere his foot touched the tree the Informer, mad with fear, caught his wrists in a grip of steel and screamed aloud above the artillery of the flood. COMmiICLOOCkKS. ECO S|