Adventure Magazine Cover — page 123: what you’re looking at

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

TREASURE scupper, vomiting; the fellow out of the crew, Haskell, lay face down on the deck, on his forearm, and would have seemed dead, so covered was he with blood, but for the heaving of his body as his breath came in sobs. Old Tom stood with fists clenched and stared as if about to blubber. T’eeay Layeen, motionless at the bulwark, as if a little awed, looked down into the water where the body of the great snake floated and moved as if still alive. And wind, a strong wind, a hustling, puffing wind, came on board the bark and shook her as if impatient to know why she loitered thus when the calm was broken. E bark lay aback in the good strong wind that men with curses and prayers had been trying to raise for the best part of a month; and while some cleaned up about the deck, others stitched the shroud for better men than themselves. Old Bill, too, would have his burial this hour. A fellow picked up the snake’s head to toss it over the side; but Heddon, as if his brain was really streaked with madness, said: “Not much you don’t! Here, you, Jack! Sew that up with Abdul!” “You mean it, Will?” asked young Rae- burn, who looked as sick and pale as a sick girl, and was helping Old Tom with the shrouds. “Mean it? YouknowI mean it! Would you cheat a dead man of his right to Heaven? Let him go to God with the thing in his hands and show ’em up there he’s been a devil-ighter. Saints wear armor of sun- scales and lightning for a lance—Abdul, bare-handed! , what a man!” No grating was large enough to serve for his burial couch, and the main hatch cover, the same on which Abdul had slept all through the calm, was unshipped, and here wrapped in canvas he was taking his last sleep on board the ship. 117 Little Vioux, looking like one who had awakened from a debauch and was al- ready being tortured for such sinfulness, had come on deck, peering about uneasily, fur- tively. He blinked at the sunlight and squeezed his head as if to keep the throbs from breaking his skull. At the sight of him, Heddon swung about, ominously—. ‘“‘Where’s that woman?” Vioux, startled, protested: “T do not know, monsieur! I know noth- in’. Mordieu, how I have the suffering!”’ “Td like that she stands by to see this burial—there’ll be much in it that won’t please her!’’ ‘“‘T have not seen her, monsieur!’’ said Vioux, with a whining anxiousness. His uneasy eyes seemed more crossed than ever as he watched Heddon and ner- vously rubbed his bristly cheeks. Vioux now raised a beard. ‘“‘No one has seen her. Maybe she died when Abdul strangled that snake—one life between ’em! That explains her love of it. We’ve got to see!’’ Heddon’s thoughts had in them the color that leads on to madness; he did not at all believe the things he said, but said them, which is the beginning of belief. So Heddon, with some curious men at his heels, went to Madame’s door and beat upon it. There was no answer. All the ports were open, but hardly more than enough to admit a man’s thumb. As al- ways when she was within the room, the ports were covered. One could not peer within. “Bring an ax!”’ said Heddon; then he half absently tried the door. It was not locked. = threw it open, peered, then stepped in- side. Madame lay in bed as if asleep, or dead. Heddon, with a jerk here and there, tore the curtains from the ports, then stood by the side of the bed, scowling down at the pale face of Madame, and belief that she was really dead fluttered about in his mind. She must have suffered from heat during the night, have been nearly stifled. She lay with a bare arm hanging over the side of the bed, and her body was covered with only a rumpled sheet drawn nearly breast high. A bubble or two of forgotten schoolboy learning rose to the surface of Heddon’s thoughts: He recalled that Roman girls Co DOO mn S C© S|