Adventure Magazine Cover — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

Born to be Hanged, But— the bar at that moment were off the Jessie Darling—the mate and second officer they were, and waiting then for the captain. The Jessie Darling left at dawn. She was short-handed. I protested. I have an aversion to un- necessary manual labor; and I have found very little of it that ever appealed to me as necessary. The Jessie Darling was a little schooner recently out of copra trade in the South Seas, more recently refitted and dressed, and—well, he gave the history of the Jessie Darling, but he was rather in ig- norance as to her future. He didn’t know who owned her. The mate did, but the mate had looked wise and said it was secret. Perhaps he did not know. Ships with secrets are fine for trouble, was the infor- mation Sam gave me with a sigh as if he had remembered a childhood sweetheart. He swore abruptly, jerked off his white apron, flung it down and declared: “T’m goin’ with you! To spliced leg!” My bump of caution is enormous. It always has been large. A hard blow over the head will raise a bump and I had got some buffetings that made caution promi- nent in my life. Sam was for rushing in with arms wide-flung and announcing that we had decided to throw in our fortunes with the Jessie Darling. However, he merely introduced me as a friend and took it for granted that I would soon come into the conversation. They plainly had no wish to cultivate my acquaintance: a condition that I sensed at once and respected. Besides they were all a little drunk. Moreover, as they were waiting for the captain, I thought I might as well wait too and make my proposition directly to him. They talked and drank. I leaned over the bar, sipping a glass filled from the pro- prietor’s own private bottle—of tea—and let Sam talk while I listened to them. I was tempted into this because they so many times dropped their voices into fur- tive, loud whispers, and did so no doubt un- der the impression that they were concealing what they had to say from prying ears. Caution and suspicion are two very im- portant characteristics in my make-up. So when I chanced to hear the phrase ‘“____ old hypocrite” used in a way that seemed to refer to the captain, and im- 2 with me mediately followed by a prophecy that he would be “shown,” I began to pay ‘very close attention, indeed, to the two mates: and the third party to whom they paid a certain deference. I gathered a number of things; among which that the Jessie Darling was likely to steer another course than that intended by the owner—who was also to be shown a thing or two. Just what the nature of the revelation would be I could not surmise from what was said. However, it seemed that the Jessie Dar- ling was being much sought after for passenger purposes—the third man, called Tom by the mates, was also waiting to make terms for passage with the captain. The mates were the ordinary tough-fibered, big breasted men of the sea, neither of them, I judged, under thirty-five. The captain came in. He was a tall saturnine fellow, with deep-set eyes and a prominent nose and huge fists. He was a sea-going man all right: grizzled, furrowed, and hard. ae THE atmosphere was chilled the e/a, moment he came through the door. The look in his eyes did it, the look he fastened on the three men as he came up. ‘Mr. Swanson,” he said frigidly, “why aren’t you on board?” The mate replied that it was all right, that the owner himself was on board and had him to come ashore on an errand. With a drunken snicker he added— “He’s got his girl with him.”’ The captain was plamly infuriated, but he kept very quiet. Only his eyes told the story as he turned toward the bar and asked for a drink. Swanson asked him to drink with them, but the captain coldly declined. “Mr. Thompson—fren’ o’ mine—doctor— for his health ’d like passage,” said Mr. Swanson, laboring with an introduction and embarrassed by something more than whisky. I remember having heard some place— my knowledge of the sea and its ways is vague—that the mate, though under the direction of the captain, is responsible only to the owner, and that a captain can not dismiss a mate as he can any other member of the crew. Obviously the captain dis- liked the mate, and I suppose some strong influence kept him from summarily ridding ma’ ¢ Eomicbooks.¢ m (0)