Adventure Magazine Cover — page 102: what you’re looking at

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

100 Gordon “Hey, mister! He talks English—better’n me or you!” The Chinese spoke slowly, and did not wholly tell the truth, for he said: “I know not any more of her than men who lie have told tome. ‘To me was given a ship and men if I would take her from a house. It was the ship, not this woman, that I wanted. The ship sank—” His speech had a slight hesitancy, very like an accent; his choice of words was pre- cise, but suggested that though he spoke in English he did not think in the language of white-skinned devils; that is, at his tongue’s end he translated what he wished to say. Chinese merchants—he was contemptu- ous of merchants—in Lianfo wanted the girl; she had much the market value of a jewel if taken to where men bought those living jewels; but they, mere money- changers, feared the magistrate’s wrath. He, who had been a sailor, learned of their desire and fear. He offered, in exchange for the command of a ship, to take her by stealth and bear her and the merchant-thief to China. <A white man who knew the harbor had been taken by force and put on the lugger, and warned with a knife’s point to take the ship out safely. All went well until right in the teeth of the harbor’s mouth; and though they drove her with all men at the pump, she filled, in the black hours be- fore dawn, sank; and such as could took to boats. That was his story, told in few words; and that he told it at all showed how unlike most Chinese, usually dully secretive at all times, he was. Heddon laughed at him in so odd a way hat the almond slant of his eyes became mere slits in a face that was as sea-stained and brown as old bronze; it was as if he were not used to the sound of laughter in his ears, and mistrusted it. “There, see there!’ said Heddon with a shout. ‘There comes the ship out after us, and we'll each wear an end of the same chain! I did much the same as you, for the same unlucky reason. Wanted a ship. Broke into the house, into her room—but she was gone. You’dgother! [I did it for a ship too. This one. You’ve lost yours. Mine’s wrecked aloft and alow. I hailed you in the harbor last night—got shot at! We’d been all right an’ fifty miles away by how, but a fool crew here thinks I know of treasure and made a fight to make me lay a Young course for a cave stuffed full of treasure chests.” The Chinese half raised a hand, and Heddon then noticed how very small and slim his hands were, like a woman’s though they had a big man’s strength. He was looking toward the bark flying down out of the morning’s mist upon them; and seemed about to say something, but the Chinese sailors called out in jabbering ex- citement as they pointed over the side. There was a trampling rush to the rail. Below in the boat were two men. No sooner had the last Chinese come up than they had slid down, and one had oars out, fending off, while the other kneeled, fever- ishly trying to loosen the knot with which the Chinese had made the line fast. Just what they meant to gain by making off no one knew, perhaps not even themselves. Fear gives cowards queer ideas of «vhat it is best to do, and they may have whispered together of how it would help them to escape punishment if they got off, were first picked up by the bark and so first might tell what hes they pleased. Haste at the knot made the man’s fingers fumble. Pelew, with violent oaths, yelled at him; and a fellow lifted his face, in staring. Men from the deck laid hold on the line to haul the boat close in. Pelew, who could fly into an instant’s rage at al- most any time, with sure ape-like scrambling went over the rail, down on the dangling sea-ladder. The man with the oars raised an oar to strike, thinking Pelew meant to jump, but Pelew drew his long sheath knife, leaned down, shouting: “You want to go! Now go an’ drown, y’ blasted——!” From the deck men called at him to stop it, but he sawed the line in two. The boat swept free on the rise of a swell that with a bucking heave tossed up the schooner; the man with the oars struck hastily at the water, and the boat was tossed out from under the lee of the Dragon, being pitched about like a chip, and like a chip was spilled into the trough of a sea and smothered under. ‘The boat was gone. A man adrift in a rough sea is a mere speck, now under, now rising with a futile splash of arm, now out of sight in the trough, now buried in the foam, and soon gone, unless a powerful swimmer. The boat, swirling away from the schooner’s side, capsized bevond the reach COMmMiCcooo Cc SS (C@