Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

Days of that you will lose. By the Saints! It makes me shiver to think of it, it does.” ‘“‘But Captain Jean is an honest man. He has treated us kindly on the voyage.” ‘“‘A lot of men are honest until you show them gold.” : ‘“°Tis true enough, Barney, and yet would I trust to Captain Jean, were it ‘e She turned quickly, as the sound of a scuffle came to her ears, in time to see Yel- low Eyes kick savagely at the mastiff. The man had evidently come up unawares close by to where they stood, but what he had heard of their conversation they could not tell. The dog, yelping with pain, picked him- self up from the deck, and rushed upon the tongueless man, ears back, white fangs gleaming wickedly in his half-grown jaws. Yellow Eyes raised his foot again, and Nan- cy, picking up a hand-spike, dealt him a blow in the face that made him measure his length on the deck. He was on his feet in an instant, with a deep cut in his forehead, and his yellow eyes full of blood, and with a roar of rage hurled himself upon her. He drew his knife as he sprang, a wicked blade which was no new sight to her. They say that as a person drowns, his whole life comes back in retrospect in that one last crowded instant. Nancy found time to regret that she had not denounced Yellow Eyes the first day out, that she had deemed it the part of prudence to keep a secret even from Barney, the things she had witnessed in the forecastle. Because the man who had been missed had been deemed a worthless jailbird at best, who doubtless had cast himself into the sea in a fit of despondency, she had been content to remain silent, lest she could not prove the crime, and so would suffer herself in the end. And now, for her forbearance, she was to feel the same knife in her own throat. She grasped the hand-spike with a firmer clutch, and met the blow as it descended, and parried it. Then she saw the lean body of the mastiff, a dun streak across her eyes, saw him leap for the corded neck of Yellow Eyes, saw the knife flash in a great circle, and saw the dog met in mid-air and fall backward, its right foreleg cut off at the shoulder. As the dog fell, Barney, the Irish lad, leaped at Yellow Eyes. The freckles on his Morgan 15 face were gone now, wiped out by the rush of blood to his skin, which was scarlet, as all the fighting instinct of his race was aroused. He hurled himself between Nancy and her assailant, but the boy was no match for the powerful arms and shoulders of the dumb man, who sent him reeling back into the gunwales, where he fell a crumpled heap in the scuppers, and then raised his knife, and sprang at the girl with the fury of a beast. A great crowd came rushing to where they struggled, shouting “‘A fight! A fight!’ and got about them in a ring to witness the sport. Nancy grasped her hand-spike with a firmer grip. And then she saw something —the girl Cherie. A Cavalier, rather down at the heel, but unmistakably of a different stamp from the vagabonds and rascals who comprised the human cargo of the Bapitiste, came running along the deck, not knowing just what was going on to cause so much excitement, and anxious to see. As he passed Cherie she pulled his sword from his belt, and squirming through the throng, stooped down, and sent it spinning along the deck to where Nancy stood. She reached for it quickly—all this in the flash of an eyelid—and Yellow Eyes, al- though he little knew it, was face to face with a pupil of one of the best swordsmen in Cromwell’s army. A smile came over Nan- cy’s face. Her eyes danced, the rich warm blood of her suffused her face with a rosy glow of zest for her father’s favorite sport. He had often told her that he had taught her to fence as well as his son might have done at her age. The recollection of it gave her confidence, which Yellow Eyes perceiving, he hesitated, and in that moment of hesitation was lost. For she had the blade at his throat now, and the cheers of the crowd in her ears, and in her heart a recklessness she had never known before, that intoxicated her. But fate, as if she had reserved him for another end, came to his rescue now. Pierre the navigator, Pierre the faithful, hearing the great din and learning what it was all about, for the first time left the helm without a hand upon it, an act that changed the whole current of Nancy Chillingworth’s life and his own. As he came plunging down the slanting deck, bellowing like a wild bull, and tossing out of his way those who impeded his pro- - gress, a great wave striking the ship on her CoMmicboooks CO