Adventure Magazine Cover — page 111: what you’re looking at

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

TREASURE lilting sing-sing, the curses of men whose stomachs were soured: “Belly catchee up-side-down feelee? Ho you see! Plenty fline bleakfast. Can do. Olo Woo Lung catchee fline chow-chow. Way-lo! Come ’gain—you see!” As Raeburn got down on deck he saw some of the forecastle men bunched to- gether at the rail, some half dressed, all un- washed, with hair touseled. A man held the bucket and line with which, every morn- ing, salt water was dipped up and thrown on their chests and backs to freshen them; but now they stood talking and staring down at the water. ‘“What’s wrong?” Raeburn asked on his way to the scuttle butt. “Man overboard.”’ “Man over—’’ Raeburn pushed among them, glanced at the unbroken water, then: “Where? Who?” “P’lew seen ’im, las’ night. He jus’ tol’ us. That hop-head jumped.” “Denasso!”’ “Denasso, yeah. P’lew had the middle watch—watchin’ for a wind. No wind with that snake a-board!’’—other men quickly mumbled that it was so— ‘‘P’lew he jus’ now come for’ard off watch an’ tol’ us. Tol’ us las’ night he seen a feller climb down off the deck-house aft there. He thought it was you up tosomepin. Right here the fel- ler he climbs up. P’lew, you know ol’ P’lew, stopped ’im. ‘What you up to?’ says P’lew. ‘T’m goin’ jump overboard,’ says the feller. Then P’lew saw who it was, an’ he says— you know ol’ P’lew! He says, ‘All right. I guess it’s best thing you can do.’ So the fel- ler climbed up—right here. P’lew said—an’ he jumped. P’lew he’d took up a line ready to throw it, but the feller didn’t make a sound. P’lew he peered over an’ could see a black spot come up an’ go down, but the feller wasn’t strugglin’, so ol’ P’lew he coiled up the line agin. He tol’ us about it jus’ now.” The men again stared down at the water, silently. The ship had drifted and turned through the night; this wasn’t at all the spot where the man had drowned himself, but it was from this place he had jumped and gone down without lifting a cry for help —here or hereafter. What a way to die! Then the man with the bucket threw it overboard and began hauling in the line to souse his mates with lukewarm water sticky with salt. 105 When Raeburn came up, Pelew stood in the forecastle doorway, prodding a pipe- stem with a straw. “I broke off a straw,” he said, only he called it a blank-blank-blank-blankety- blanked straw, and sucked and puffed at the clogged stem. Then, interestedly, “Say, I thought it was you, las’ night an’—” “But why’d you let him!” “Let im? Why ’f he wanted to, what’d Icare? The ship was still an’ the water like glass, so I jus’ thought I’d see if he’d do it. In this blasted world if a feller can’t do with his own body what he wants, there ain’t nothin’ he’s got a right to! Rot- ten blasted hop-head! But if I'd ha’ known he had that much guts I’d_ ha’ liked him.” Pelew sucked and puffed and spit, then with a curse broke the stem from the pipe and slammed the pieces to the deck. He held out his hand, demandingly: “Give me your pipe. I’ve got to have a smoke! Now don’t stan’ there lookin’ like you was seein’ things in your sleep—give me that pipe!”’ The only tears that fell for the unhappy Denasso dropped from the eyes of the little Chink girl. All of her life she had been watched over, treated as a thing of rare porcelain, given rich clothes, sweet food that her flesh might be the better to look at; soft beds where she might snuggle like a pearl on silk; and Denasso had given her nothing but kind words, seeming the more kind perhaps because given furtively lest Madame overhear. Yet Po-Shu wept for him as if she had lost an elder brother. T’eeay Layeen looked at her in silence. Woo Lung, who knew more of wisdom than was contained in even the wise books of the East, said: ‘He muchee fline boy—galow! Too bad die-lo. Slomebody belongey bad heart steal- um yer tsiang. Flinebloy. Too bad. No blobbery—all finishee one-tim jump. Maybe hab got fline tim now. Maskee!”’ Thus the old scholar who had fallen low cheerily paid his repect to the un- lucky boy from whom somebody with a bad heart had stolen the pipe; but, said Woo Lung, being a fine boy he had made no fuss, and with one jump had put his troubles to an end. Maybe he was better off than ever now. And what of it, any- how? Maskee! NOOK (C©