Adventure Magazine Cover — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

30 I was patient. When there is no need for hurry, 1 can be extraordinarily patient. Besides, I had a headache and my body was sore. I waited for night. Night came. Yang Li led the way, but he remained ‘behind me when the door opened and once more I stood waiting for Thrope to recog- nize me. Thrope and Swanson were drinking to- gether. What agreements and plans they were making I have no way of knowing. They sprang up, Swanson with a yell, as he saw me, half naked and bandaged—a big cleaver in my hand. I was in earnest, and I meant it when I said— “Up with your hands.” Why people think it is only a gun that commands the respect of uplifted hands, I do not know. A sober man would have had better sense than Swanson. Thrope, drunk as he was, raised his hands. But Swanson attempted to pull a gun—my gun—from the holster he had fastened on his hip. He was slow as though untying a knot. I leaned forward to strike—but a streak of steel 2-22-2221pped past my head. The thirsty point of that flexible blade went into Swan- son’s throat and pierced through his neck; whence the thin wrists of Yang Li got such driving power I do not know. Swanson went over backward, his hands clawing at the knife. His head, in falling, struck the bulkhead, and he scarcely moved. Thrope gasped something about it being me—again. I told him that neither jails nor Davy Jones’ locker seemed able to hold me. “They hang men for aiding a mutiny,” I told him. ‘The Federal Government—not the tenderloin judges.” I knew there was no chance of him ever being hanged, but I might as well give him something to think over when he would be alone. JI wanted him to do much thinking, because I had an idea that this affair would have to end in a compromise all the way round. I trussed Thrope up tightly, painfully tight in fact. I wanted him to have plenty to think of. Something more than mere deviltry. From that time on I worked quick. The man who stood a drunken guard over Captain Whibley’s door, and no doubt kept Adventure awake only by cursing the captain and making remarks unfit for the ears of any woman, especially of her who was on the other side of the door, went down with a hole in his head. He happened to have been one of those who had pounded me, or he might have fared better. The two mates left, Johnson and a young fellow by the name of Robbins, were alarmed by the shot and came to investi- gate. Robbins was the fuller of fight—and there was a chance of his surviving if he should be removed directly to a hospital as soon as we reached San Francisco. Johnson did the discreet thing and sur- rendered. With a rope end in one hand and the gun in the other I went on deck. Yang and the cook followed, but they carried water. A form that the rope could bring sufficiently to consciousness to understand what had happened was doused with water. Three fellows of the drunken group* around the capstan were sober enough to fight. No time was wasted in argument. It was stand to attention with a respectful “‘sir” or get hurt, and the man. who threw a marlin-spike at me from the rear served as an object lesson for those sober enough to realize what happened to him. I found Tyler peacefully snoozing with his head in a bucket; no doubt the bucket had originally served as a pillow. I gave him some attention from the rope end and knocked him down with the butt of the gun when he came up fighting mad. “Thank Gord it’s you! I wouldn’t take it off no other feller,’ he said as he sat on the deck and rubbed his head to see how big the bump was. I told him that.I did not know any more about working a ship than I knew of ping- pong, but if he would give the orders, I would see that they were carried out. It was a drunken and sullen lot that turned to; but they knew very well that I did not carry a gun as an ornament. When they seemed sober enough to understand that what I was saying was not out of any fear of them, I let it be known that the chances of their being prosecuted for mu- tiny when they reached port—if they did their work well in the meantime—were rather slim. I was perhaps taking a good deal on to myself in holding out that hope; but I have been accustomed to taking a good deal on Gomichooks.¢o =)