Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

966 I strolled forward. It was a beautiful night, the moon was so close to the edge of the deck-awning you could almost reach it. The ‘“‘promenade deck,” wide as the way into a rabbit-hutch, was a mosaic of fantastic shapes, shifting lazily with the roll of the vessel, and the moonlight did kaleidoscopic tricks with your shadow when it got under the awning. Miss Foote was leaning over the port rail, looking out over the sleek liquid mirror of sea. Several islands were in sight, all about us, easily transformed into sleeping gigantic marine monsters floating past, if one had a lively imagination. I think I have overlooked stating that Miss Foote was young, slender and alto- gether a lovely woman; until I saw her there alone I hadn’t admitted it to myself, for Presho had out-maneuvered me from the beginning of the passage by giving the Malay steward four Straits dollars to get the seat next to her in the saloon. You see, he had seen her on the jetty as much as ten minutes before I did. That fool steward could have doubled his money if he had con- sulted me about where she was going to sit. That’s why I had been reluctant to admit she was a very pretty woman. ‘““This is a scene good enough to put in a story,” I said to her, claiming a section of the rail as near her as I dared. ‘Mr. Presho told you.”’ She didn’t look at me. Her face was between me and the moon and I couldn’t help noticing her ex- quisite profile. ‘“‘Presho told me to put this in a story! Absurd! I hope I know what to put in my stories without asking Presho.” “IT mean Mr. Presho told you I wrote stories—and he promised he wouldn’t.”’ ‘Do your SodolI.” “You do? Why are you—do you spell your name with a ‘y’? Are you Randolph Burrell Smythe? R. B. Smith is the name on the passenger list.”’ “R. B. Smith is good enough for me on a Singapore boat, and it is too hard to make that purser spell any way except his own.” “‘J remember now—I should have recog- nized you—I saw it in a magazine.” “What?” ‘Your picture. I read the literary mag- azines. I write myself, you know, if Mr. oe hasn’t told you, and I am sure he as.” Adventure “This is a night for confidences—do you write under your own name?”’ “Yes. I haven’t become so famous that I have to travel incog. to avoid the ques- tions of my fellow passengers. I’ve sold a dozen stories or so, and I am spending the money. Going round tbe world, and then T’ll perhaps try my hand at a few more New Hampshire stories. I love the tropics— they are so romantic!” ‘They are, until an elephant steps on you or you get the prickly heat. What partic- ular things do you like about the tropics?”’ “Oh, the color and queer characters— pirates and fighting savages and such things. I just love adventure stories! I think one has more of a chance to have adventures in the odd corners of the world. I love the tropics!”’ ‘I couldn’t help it, so I said: ‘‘The tropics are lucky,” and then I was sorry, for she turned on me with frigidity almost equal to one of her own New Hampshire’s March blizzards. ‘““Mr. Presho proposed before you came, and I believe he did it just to give me an idea for a story. That’s how I came to tell him I couldn’t marry anybody. I’ve got to make a name in literature.” ‘“‘T’m not.” “Not what?”’ “Doing it so you can put it in a story— proposing, I mean.”’ “That’s the best you could expect to have it used for, if you really mean you are pro- posing,” and then laughed at me. You see, she understood me a little, for our deck- chairs had been together a good deal. I rather suspect she knew I was feeding Straits dollars to the steward. ‘“‘Presho?”’ I asked. “What about Mr. Presho?’’ “* Accepted? ”’ “Rejected. If you insist on keeping up’ the literary metaphor, ‘Declined without thanks.’ Why, he parts his hair with a towel, he’s that bald!”’ ‘So Presho proposed, did I never finished that question. As the steamer rounded an island we unmasked a schooner drifting under a slatting foresail, for there was little air stirring. She wasn’t more than five hundred yards away, and as she popped into view from behind the black point of the island men began to yell aboard her. Then a red Coston light, a sig- nal of distress, flared up on her poop deck. CO MICLOOOKS CO