Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

Days of Morgan roasting on a spit, and above it hung a musket on two pegs. ‘“Mon dieu! Monk, couldst not wait for the wedding feast to begin before stuffing thyself?” exploded the Governor. ‘One would think you had tasted nothing for a week, yet I myself have seen thee gorging thyself this whole day long.” The monk turned a sheepish countenance toward them at this interruption, and has- tily dropped the chicken-bones beneath the table. “Wedding feast!’ cried Nancy. ‘What mean you by this, Monsieur?” The look on the Governor’s face told her plainly that she had been trapped. Meanwhile, on the beach, down under the castle, Barney and the dog lay in the soft sand, silence and darkness all around them. When he judged that half a glass might have run its course, he arose softly to his feet, skirted the crowd of merrymakers, who still kept up their singing and shouting, and began working his way to the foot of the path. Under a genipa-tree a sailor lay sleeping, exhausted by his day of debauchery, his head pillowed upon his arm. Barney glanced about him stealthily, and observing no one near, bent down, and feeling in the mariner’s shirt possessed himself of his knife and pistol. This done, he vanished into the shadows at the foot of the cliff, and began to climb, Three - legs sniffing the ground eagerly. Suddenly the dog whined, and Barney grasped him by the muzzle just in time to choke back a bark. “What is it, boy?” he whispered. “What’s the matter, old fellow?” He seized the dog’s scruff tightly in his hand to keep him from bounding away, and then, looking upward through the trees, saw, in a clearing where a little of the moonlight sifted through the branches, the furtive figure of a man slinking up the stone steps, a grotesque figure with the head and shoulders of a Hercules and the pendulant arms of some monster ape, the sinister figure of Yellow Eyes, the tongue- less man, creeping noiselessly, now hidden by the gnarled trunks of palms and cedars, again showing for an instant in the shim- mering moonlight, like some uncanny beast in the jungle. Boy and dog followed as closely behind him as Barney dared to go. When they 27 reached the bottom of the ladder they saw him far above them, and by the time the Irish lad had half-carried the three-legged mastiff up the iron rounds, the dumb man had disappeared, nor could he see him any- where upon the top of the precipice, at the castle door. CHAPTER VIII A VOICE IN THE DARK “IDE SEATED, Mademoiselle.” D’Oge- ron bowed, and motioned her to the table. “The wedding feast awaits. I hope the viands will tickle your appetite.” “The capon!” interrupted the monk, carving off another leg of the fowl and thrusting it into the yawning jaws of his red face, which shone as if it had been greased. ‘Never have I tasted such a bird. Seasoned? Fit for a king! And the sauce, Mademoiselle! And the fish. Such a fish! And a pig or a kid or something upon the spit. How it salutes my nostrils!” He shook his head, as much as to say that further words had failed him, and rell- ing his eyes at her, drained the wine-glass at a gulp and motioned to the little man in the smock to fill it up again. ‘‘What means this, Monsieur?” demand- ed Mistress Chillingworth, drawing her slim figure up very straight. ‘I came not here for a wedding feast, but to inspect that wealth with which you promised to endow me. Is this the return I am to receive for the faith I reposed in you? I trusted to your gallantry as a Frenchman, Monsieur, for better treatment.” 3 D’Ogeron shrugged his shoulders. ‘Love and war know no conscience,”’ he answered. “If I did deem it best to hasten the happy hour of our nuptials, it is for you to bow to my superior wisdom. Be as- sured I have not acted as I have without a view to your happiness and safety. I ad- mired you from the moment I saw you, Mademoiselle. You seemed to me to be so friendless, my pity was enlisted in your be- half. You are among rough men, my dear child, men who would hesitate at noth- ing. I offer you my protection and my love.” “Love! You know not the meaning of the word. Things have come to a pretty pass, methinks, when cowards prate of love.” COMmichoooks CO