Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

Days of Morgan Many’s the poor devil he has sent to die in the plantations. Now he knows what it is to be paid in the same coin.” The ship was now well out of sight of land, and night coming on. They made their way into the forecastle to choose their bunks, and a poor choice it was, seeing that all the best places had been taken by those more prudent than themselves. A stuffy, stinking hole it was, lighted by a smoking lamp or two, overrun with vermin, crowded and packed with a noisy, blasphemous throng of men, herded together like cattle. Into this fetid cavern Nancy and Barney crept. The girl found an empty bunk too small and undesirable for anybody else to have claimed it, and curling up in it, laid down, and soon was fast asleep, with the cursing and laughing crowd of derelicts gambling and drinking all about her, and the lapping of the sea against the side of the ship in her ears. * How long a time she had slept she did not know. A low whining sound, as if of a child in pain, aroused her, and raising herself on her elbow and looking about she made out on the cabin floor the figure of a man lying upon his back, with a half-grown mastiff puppy licking his face. | The forecastle was shrouded in darkness. A few faint flickers yet remained in one of the tallow lamps. The merrymakers who had been gathered about the rough table, playing at ombre, or lanterloo, and drink- ing and feasting, had vanished. The whole place was choked with the sound as of many men hard asleep. Their snores and moans and throat-rattlings floated out from every bunk, and blended in a chorus in which each man seemed to be trying to outdohis neighbor. The one upon the floor was not disturbed. She leaned from her bunk, the better to observe him and this dog that pawed at his breast, whining and uttering yelps of dis- tress. As she did so, the little patch of light that showed at the hatchway darkened, and aman came down. She drew back and lay still. It was Yellow Eyes. He crept softly to the man upon the floor and-turned him partly over, and Nancy saw then what she had not observed before, the shaft of a knife in the fellow’s neck under the ear. Yellow Eyes drew it out and wiped the blade upon the dead man’s shirt. Then, kicking the puppy out of his way, lifted him upon his back, and, with a quick 13 look around him, staggered up the compan- lonway with his burden. Nancy strained her ears then for the sound she knew would follow, but she could not be sure that she heard the splash as the body went overboard, as she knew it did go, as well as if she had seen it, out there on deck, with the fog settled down all around the ship, engulfing it in a ghostly mist. She lay still, scarcely daring to breathe, for she knew, too, what. Yellow Eyes would do next. And presently he came back with something in his hand that looked like a coat, and kicking again at the dog that was smelling at something upon the floor, dropped to his knees and began swabbing at the great red stain that Nancy knew was there. . Then he disappeared up the hatchway again, leaving the puppy whimpering in the middle of the forecastle floor. He was back again, more quickly this time, on his toes, starting at every creak and groan of the straining timbers, listening intently, turning his head first this way and then that. Once Nancy saw his yellow eyes, glowing in the darkness like coals, full upon her. She closed her own. She scarcely breathed. Her heart stopped beating in her breast, and a roaring filled her ears. But he passed her bunk and went forward softly, and by and by she heard the sound of his heavy body settle down in a bunk some distance from where she lay. The orchestra of slumbering men contin- ued its discordant music, and presently she heard a new note join in the refrain, and knew that Yellow Eyes had gone happily to sleep, with the dead man’s wallet in his vest, and peace in his soul. In all that com- pany she and the puppy alone were ill at ease. The dog’s whines filled her with pity. Impulsively she climbed down softly past the sleeping men in the bunks beneath her, gathered the puppy in her arms, and, climb- ing back with him, the two laid down to- gether, and so, at last, dropped off to sleep, and slept till morning. CHAPTER IV THREE-LEGS AIR winds and smooth seas marked each succeeding day for three weeks. Captain Jean, the grizzled Breton master of the Saint-Jean Baptiste, steered their course CoMmicboooks CO