Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 166: what you’re looking at

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

148 together, and although the reason puzzled the skipper, any sailor could have told him that it was because Young possessed a qualifica- tion greatly to be desired in the forecastle of any ship on which the crew had been together for several voyages. He was a good listener to whom Schwartz could tell all his old yarns without being rewarded by groans. He bad an enormous fund of new anecdotes and experiences inland in cities the smuggler had never seen. In addition he would square his narrow shoul- ders to anything on the ship, from a job of stowing chain cable to the boatswain himself. Young’s pop eyes and timid face were no indication of his courage, which was indis- putable. For all of these reasons, wherever Willett heard Schwartz’s booming, boastful baritone he would find Young leaning some- where not far away. With the officers the detective was not so popular. He was always prowling into un- likely places about the ship, which exasper- ated the mates’ sense of the fitness of things. Willett was forced to issue secret instruc- tions to let the man alone, and although the mates thought the captain was exhibiting barefaced favoritism to a relative, the skip- per knew that Young wished to learn every likely hiding place on the ship. However, the captain could do nothing to help the boy’s nervousness. He was not only a bad helmsman, which any watch officer can testify is nuisance enough, but he was too eager to be of service to do any good. For instance, only the day before he had re- ported icebergs when there wasn’t a berg in sight. The Sachem had received an ice warning, and Willett had doubled the lookouts. Young, who was at the wheel for the last two hours of the mid-watch, had no re- sponsibility beyond keeping the ship on its course, but when the first false dawn threw a grayish-yellow light over the sea the second mate noticed he was continually looking up from the compass card and peer- ing out across the tumbling gray toward the fog-streaked horizon ahead. Many helmsmen have that trick, particularly if they are a little farsighted and want to rest their eyes, blurred from steady peering at the binnacle. The mate thought nothing of it, till all at once Young’s face became stamped with surprize and horror. His eyes popped from their sockets. Adventure “Ice!” he ejaculated. ““Where?”’ the mate snapped, scanning the sea directly in front of the ship’s bow, for Young’s expression was one of sudden im- mediate danger. “All around the horizon, dozen of them!”’ gasped the quartermaster. The mate peered, rubbed his eyes, looked again and cursed Young for a fool. There was nothing there. Simply one of those tricks an overimaginative man’s eyes will play on him toward the end of the grave- yard watch. But after such incidents all the mates hung over the compass when Young was on duty. They made his life miserable, but his steering rapidly improved under their snarling and profane instruction. “ # ARRIVED at Brest, the Sachem weg was able to discharge and load her —=——# cargo in fivedays. On the third day Schwartz and Young left together for Paris, and during their absence Captain Willett occupied his mind at odd moments by won- dering what success the detective was hav- ing there. It was with the keenest interest that he watched the pair returning to the ship together just before sunset on sailing day. The Sachem had pulled out and was anchored in the roads, and the two quarter- masters were sitting on the forward thwart of a motor sailor. As they started up the gangway the captain leaned over the bridge- dodger, anxious to overlook no detail. He noticed that the faces of both men showed the marks of hard pleasure and sleepless nights. Even now they were slight- ly unsteady on their feet from a last bottle of cognac on the train, but while Schwartz’s brunette features were flushed with hilarity and his air proclaimed him at peace with the world, Young followed him up the lad- der pale with the effort to control his faculties, watching every motion of his quarry. At the head of the gangway Schwartz stumbled and caught at the rail. As if by accident, Young also stumbled, fell against the same spot and, though his hand was concealed from Schwartz by his body, Willett could see his hand groping under the rail, feeling for anything which might have been deposited there. Unsteadily Schwartz lurched up the deck, apparently far more intoxicated than the skipper had ever seen him before. He caught at the gunwale of a lifeboat, laughed GOMIGIOO (©