Adventure Magazine Cover — page 87: what you’re looking at

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

A Samaritan of the Riverine The struggle was very brief. Stephen Been wrestled with his enemy on the sway- ing hut for a moment and, freeing himself, reached the tree and looked down for a foot- hold in the boat. But that struggle had given them both to death. The swaying of the hut had loosed the spar, and spar and boat had darted off with the current. The convict gnashed his teeth in rage and climbed higher into the tree to signal for the other dingey. To his surprise it was not more than a dozen lengths away—the mate and the supercargo had seen the struggle and had hastened with their assistance. They steered the boat under the gum and called to Stephen Been to drop in. “Tt’ll hold only one more safely,” advised the supercargo. Stephen Been prepared to take the jump, and seeing him, the Informer shrieked again. Then the supercargo looked to the figure on the hut and recognized in the blood-eyed, foam-flecked, wild animal in the coverings of man—his father. Still he did not falter. ‘‘There’s only room for one,”’ he repeated to the man whom he respected. ‘Jump, dad!’ Been hesitated—the expression of affec- tion had half killed the wolf in him. The Informer began to cry and pray and blaspheme by turns, his big round face working convulsively. “Jump, dad!” said the supercargo. “Jump quick—we can’t hold on here much longer!” Stephen Been had decided. The wolf was altogether dead; the Samaritan breathed again. “Tl wait till nex’ time,’ hesaid. ‘Take this snivellin’ vermin, though he ain’t good enough to sit in the boat with you, George.” Even in that awful moment George Garth wondered at the words and the expression of dying hatred, but he had no time to think just then. A crying, shivering bundle fell through the air and into the boat, and the dingey headed for the steamer, the mate calling to the Captain to hold on a little longer. But before they could reach him the great gum tree went down, and the hut, with Stephen Been perched on its roof, drifted with the boiling current. They got away from their moorings, and had the engines going in a marvelously 651 short time, but the hut was not then in sight. The darkness did not end the search. All through the night the Ti/pa was a blaze of red lights tramping up and down the water-road, one moment staggering pain- fully up-hill against the swift stream, the next shooting like an arrow from a bow with the current; and the whistle shrieking at every pile of wreckage. At dawn they spoke of him as dead, yet they persevered in the search. They intended to find his body if they tramped the river as long as Philip Vanderdecken cruised off Table Mountain. And at ten o’clock they found him, and he was yet alive. The house had collapsed against a heap of débris, and the timber had pinned him by the waist. During the night the pile had largely increased, and the great weight almost cut him in two. Yet he had survived the awful experience. His feet had been frozen in the icy water; his middle had been crushed by the weight of the floor- wreck, and still the wonderful vitality the convict system had developed in him had strengthened him to triumph. He did know them as they hailed his dis- covery with cries of pity and affection; as they dug him clear of the débris; as they tenderly lifted his bruised body and dan- gling, useless limbs from wreck to raft, and from raft to the steamer-ark. He heard only the fearful chorus of the flood—the rushing of great waters and the clarion song of the New-born at its antiphon. In the afternoon he awoke to find himself in his own berth with the supercargo bending anxiously over him. ‘Oh, dad, dad!” said the young man. “Yow re all right, ain’t your? You don’t feel any pain?”’ Stephen Been smiled. George; but I ain’t feelin’ any pain. back’s broke—that’s what it is.” And then he dozed again. As the lamps were lighted he asked if the river had gone down. ‘““Not enough to be safe out of the dea water,’’ the mate told him, “but they could get a boat ashore in the back-wash easily.” Then Stephen Been cried fiercely, “Let him go ashore, then! Put the vermin ashore! I’m the last of them all—don’t let him see me dead!” And wondering, they obeyed him. The supercargo, quite at a loss to account for the hatred of his father, told Garth Senior that “Tm not all right, My GoOmicbdooksteo