Adventure Magazine Cover — page 100: what you’re looking at

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

86 until fifteen were down, and one night, while Saltsman watched, a man died, despite the stimulating hypodermic which the hospital apprentice had taught him to use. The crew grew panicky, fear ridden, suspicious of every cough and sneeze, and went hurriedly away when Saltsman or the hospital apprentice appeared. - Saltsman grew pale and_hollow-eyed, but kept cheerful with strength which seemed endless. Hasty Day, one of the few who refused to be in any way affected, asked him about a relief: “T guess I'd better keep on,” said Salts- man. “These others ain’t had no fair chance to learn, and there might be some, like little Bobbie White, that I could keep from going even if I did fail with him.” — “Seems as if you’d be afraid of getting it yourself, sticking so long,” said Hasty. “T never had nothing in my life,” said the other solemnly. “All right, old Salty, go right to it,” said the boatswain’s mate. “You and ‘Pills’ are doing fine, but there’s no need to row a good boat on the rocks, either.” Gradually the epidemic began to release its grip on the ship. Those who were seriously ill passed the crisis, and the lighter cases became convalescent. As if its pres- ence aboard had innoculated the rest of the crew with an antitoxin, no more cases appeared. With his charges giving less trouble, Saltsman took up his navigation again. He had an old pilot chart of the North Atlantic and put down each day with a pencil a ringed dot to mark the position -he found. The chart was worn and showed many erasures, and Saltsman’s marks, where he had laboriously sought to make his own calculations come somewhere near the correct noon positions, bore a striking resemblance to the irregular outline of a range of mountains. progress, and his faithfulness with the sick made the officers more lenient toward his many questions. THE Alia, bound for the Gulf ports, #F came to the straits between Florida === and the Bahama Islands. At dusk one night she passed Jupiter light. Salts- man had the chart spread out on an empty bunk and crouched beside it on his knees. A penciled cross marked the position of the ~~ i eS ally - aN Still he was making Adventure ship, while he measured from the margin the distance off shore. So engrossed was he that Ben Hoskins, the watch officer, had to call twice, rather loudly, before Saltsman got up and came to the door of the compartment, his stub of a pencil still clutched in his fingers. “Give me a shot of something for my head, will you?” demanded the officer. © “Make it pretty strong, too.” “Ves sir,” said Saltsman and unlocked the little woven-wire clothes locker that he and the hospital apprentice had taken for a medicine chest. “Has the doctor given you anything yet?” asked Saltsman. “No! What’s that got to do with it? Shake a leg and let’s have something. I’m on watch.”’ The navigator was cross and irritable. He was unused to sickness of any kind. His temples throbbed, and a burning cord seemed to draw at the back of his head. He felt feverish, and his throat was parched and dry. Saltsman rolled out from a bottle Jabeled “‘aspirin,”’ a couple of white pellets and drew off a glass of water. “This here’s for the headache, sir,’ he said. “Let ’em go down whole. It gen- erally takes two doses if the headache’s bad. I'll bring the other up to the bridge when it’s time for it.” | The officer swallowed the medicine, and Saltsman watched him walk rather un- steadily to the boat-deck ladder and climb up. “He acts lke he’s got it, too,” he said to himself and started back to the chart room, pausing to close the medicine chest. “By golly,” he said as he eyed the row of bottles, “doc always gives salts, too, and I forgot it.” Pouring out a liberal dose into the glass Hoskins had used, he dissolved it in water heated over a little alcohol lamp. Then, making a round of the patients and seeing them all quiet, he followed the officer to the bridge. The night was dark and heavily overcast. The wind which had been blowing from al- most dead ahead, was nowabeam. Coming from the lighted compartment to the darkened bridge, Saltsman could not see very well at first. Only the quartermaster at the wheel and the dark blur of a bundled up signal-boy pacing back and forth were in sight. Gomichbooks. co