Adventure Magazine Cover — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

Pearl-Hunger her without being a blasted dog. I wish McGree had knocked me overboard!”’ “Don’t say that! You were splendid. She—she said so!” Heddon glared at him: “Yes, I kept the man that ought have had her from getting her! He was a fool for not taking her—no man can whip him. He knows it. Black Spanish He’s too good for her. He’s a man.” Heddon raised his hand from the bucket and looked at it—puffed almost to his fore-_ arm, black and purplish, with red sore-like abrasions on the knuckles. He put his two hands together, measuring them, then soused both into the hot water. “Ought to have my head in here, too,” he said, disgusted. “Why are you going to the Kulicos, Will?” “To get rid of that girl you ought to marry. You’ll never find another woman that knows so little.” “What on earth are you going to do with ker on the Kulicos?’? Oxenham cried anxiously. “l’m going to give her away. You'd better take her. You can have her. Any- body can have her that wants her.”’ Oxenham tugged at his. fingers, hesitating to ask questions for fear of shocking answers; but at last he did ask softly, anxiously: “What do you mean, Will? Who is there you would trust ker with?” “Ben Stockton. Broken down Qld sailing captain. Runs general store on the reefs. Has gambling layout. MHalf-blind. Does business with scoundrels. Everybody thinks he is one. Ill give her to him.”’ “You don?t mean it! I know you don’t mean that! You’re just trying to get me excited again.”” Oxenham.smiled weakly, trying to show that he understood. ‘“‘What do I care whether you get excited! My mouth’s sore—hurts me to talk. I'll give her to him, I tell you. That’s why I headed for the Kulicos. You promise to marry her—I’ll go back to Lianfo. Other- wise, Ben Stockton gets her!” <i} ALL THAT Heddon had said of S78 Stockton was true; but the truth did not end there. Stockton, well over middle age, was a man in whom good- breeding had not been quite effaced, never would be effaced—not even on the Kulicos. He was a tall man with a stoop; his eyes were perpetually bad, and he wore dark 65 glasses. Once, after the glasses had been broken, the glare -of sea and sand nearly blinded him so that he could not read, and he had a letter that had been handed from one deck to another two or three times until it reached him. That was how, afew times a year, such letters as this one came to him. He carried it about for days, unread, be- cause among such men as were at hand there was no one whom he was willing should know what was in the letter. But one afternoon he had taken Heddon into a corner of his corrugated iron store- room. This was like an oven in which malodorous things were being cooked. There were barrels of rum that had seeped, molasses, the smell and stench of hemp, the stink of copra and coffee-bags. Heddon sat on a box of tinned meat and read the letter aloud. | It was from Stockton’s wife in Sydney. The letter was filled with their three daugh- ters, and a tiny grandson, named Benjamin Stockton Somebody-or-other. There was much about the Benjamin Stockton Some- body-or-other. He had some new teeth and had been colicky. Two daughters were still in school, private school; and the letter told of what they were now doing in music, how far they:had gone in languages, of the books they were reading, their naive com-, ments on what they read, of their dresses, friends, dances. The youngest, Charlotte, was keeping up her diary to send to her father when the year was out, and she would let no one have a peek at its pages, sacred to his eyes. It was a long, affectionate, cultured letter, written by a gentlewoman. That was why Stockton had carried it for days, unread. He felt that he could not endure +o have its contents babbled, and its phrases garbled and tossed back to him in rough jokes. Stockton dictated an answer in Heddon’s writing; he lied in saying he had sprained a wrist—couldn’t hold a pen; but at that, his whole life and attitude was a lie. The family thought him wealthy, but tied from them by interests that in another year or two—for years it had been, “just another year or two’’—he would sell out, then come to them. They did not know that desper- ately, by every turn and angle of trade, he was gleaning a fair profit, which to the last penny he poured into their comfort. No one on the Kulicos had known that he had a family. Bennings had always been NOOK 1@)