Adventure Magazine Cover — page 182: what you’re looking at

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

The story of a Fateful Meeting “N IGHT, ca Megasi0 O UNDERSTAND this tale prop- erly one should bear in mind that nobody, not even an ad- miral, can live so lonely a life at sea as the captain of a tramp steamer. Mr. Westcott, third engineer of the S. S. Lockborough Inlet, decided early in the evening that he was tired of sitting in a hot and crowded café on the Calle Valencia, drinking cheap and fiery Spanish wine and smoking innumerable cigarets and listening to a fifth-rate cabaret show. He wanted to be by himself. He wanted exercise. He wanted fresh air. He wanted, above all, to be free of the companionship of the second mate and the fourth engineer, both enjoying themselves far too much. He had calculated that, at the rate they were throwing their money around, there would be brawling along the Calle Valencia and the Plaza de San Juan before midnight, and possibly police interference. And being a quiet, hard working young man, intent on getting his chief’s ticket when next he was home, Mr. Westcott wished to avoid all possible chance of coming into conflict either with the authorities or with the captain of the Lockborough Inlet whom he disliked and feared, with no better reason than that he was a stern, silent man who kept to himself and had a poor opinion of human nature. And so Mr. Westcott set out for a long, hard walk up the hills at the back of the town and there met with adventures and had a narrow escape from being killed and was given an insight into Captain Selby’s past that bewildered him. He walked quickly through narrow streets until at last he reached a quarter where there were gardens and stone-faced terraces and large villas, high above the dusty road, among cypress-trees and palms and olives and fig-trees and oaks. Aware that he was tired, he slackened speed and halted. It was late. He was a long way from the ship. He was about to turn when a strange ‘impulse swept over him to leave the road and climb a flight of broad stone steps on the right. He did not believe in telepathy or thought transference or intuition or anything so stupid, but some one who lived on the hill was in trouble, he felt sure. Against his better judgment, he began to ascend the broad steps between high brick 176 CONMICGVOOLKS C©