Adventure Magazine, Mid-September 1917 — page 166: what you’re looking at

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

164 with wild cabbage and palmetto, with here and there pines lifting graceful crests above the lower growth, was worthy of its name. The bill of fare oi the married lovers, be- sides turtle steaks and fins and eggs, was varied. There were agoutis, wild-hogs and opos- sum in plenty, besides the pigeons and sea- food. Humming-birds and parrots supplied their aviary. The climate was equable, save in July and the rainy season, when Todd planned to take his bride back to Carolina. She was tiny and tawny-haired, golden of skin from the sun, curvingly lithesome and sweet and Todd was tall and lean, sun-dried almost to the texture and color of his strips of turtle-flesh. And they were very much in love. . The turtles only came with the tides, and, betweenwhiles, they paddled or bathed or lay in grass hammocks beneath a palmetto shelter. They lived out-of-doors night and day and were seldom out of sight of each other. She—her name was Mary—adored Todd and Tom worshiped Mary. He loved to pick her up in his arms and go striding off with her, laughing at her talk of weight. Todd was thirty-five and Mary twenty- two. ‘Todd knew the Bahamas as a woods- man knows his forest and Mary knew only Todd. He had given up his pilotage to turn turtler again so that he might be al- ways with her and, in the rains, they were going to upbuild a tiny farm in Carolina for—some day. Life was all ahead of them and very pleasant. The Key was three miles long and about half that width. Close to it were two small- er keys that could be reached by wading at the ebb. The nearer, densely wooded, was as thick with agoutis as a dog’s hide with fleas and Mary made wonderful stews out of the rabbit-like flesh. On the twenty-second day of their honey- moon—they still reckoned it diurnally— they had their first quarrel. Mary pouted and Tom sulked and, by the time the quar- rel was ripe, neither could remember how it started. Yet Mary held it for the joy of bringing Todd back to her repentant and he left her still pouting when he strode off, gun on shoulder, to get agoutis as a peace offering. He did not see the kiss she blew him when she was sure he was out of sight among the palmettos and she did not hear the sigh he _ Adventure gave but both sensed in their hearts that the breach was only serious enough to serve for a yet stronger cementing. Todd’s stubborn mood held hard enough for him to brave the current between the two keys, already surging to the swift flood, and he waded it hip-deep between the weed- ed rocks and plunged into the thick scrub. Mary took their simple duck garments to the tiny spring and beat at them on a coral slab with a wooden paddle, venting her dis- pleasure—mostly for herself—in the blows. Up from the sea in the early afternoon came a rakish brigantine of thirty guns, out- side of fore and stern chasers, and one hun- dred and forty men. Her hull was painted black with a narrow red streak that accented the sweetness of her lines, her masts that seemed too lofty for her build, slanted aft, her canvas, from studding-sail to main, showed snowy white, yet marred here and there with unpatched holes where round shot had torn through. She sailed fast, low of freeboard but buoyant, and her top- sails rose swiftly against the sky. Bane’s luck had held. The Neptune had given place to a better ship and play- ing the part of merchantman, he had come close enough to a Spanish brigantine to board and take her after a desperate skirmish in which he lost nine men and the Spaniards seventeen. He had rechristened her the Venture and found her the fastest keel of his knowledge. At fifteen knots he had outrun two sail of the vice-admiral’s flotilla, especially com- missioned to his capture since his escape from Providence Harbor. They had caught him between them as he had come out of an inlet and he had run their gantlet, broad- side for broadside, bringing down the top- mast of one and standing off the other in a running fight. Now he was in a hurry, for the men-of- -war had interrupted his taking on wood and water after careening. The wood might go, water he must have, and Scarry- Dick had promised them they would find a spring on Green Key near which the chase had led them. “A turtler lives there, or did,” said Denton. ‘A splint-bone by the name of Todd. I landed there three years ago and he shot pigs for us. We were lootfull and we paid him with cloth, so he will hunt for us again with a good will.” ‘‘Aye, or a bad one, for that matter,” said COmicloo ©