All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 83: what you’re looking at

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

TEACH: PIRATE DE LUXE. “That again, I can’t tell you. I drifted away very quickly, and was for the most part lying down in the bottom of the boat. - Perhaps I was a little delirious.” ‘“‘ Afraid of being shot at, I suppose. Whose yacht was it?” “Ogden Brearley’s Maid of Athens.”’ ‘‘ Phew! The lumber king. My father met him once. And was he on board?” “He was.”’ ‘* Any ladies?” ‘No. They went North by train. shied at Hatteras.” “Thank God for that. Well, Mr. Ghyll, you may take it, I fancy, that Captain Teach has got hold of Mr. Ogden Brearley and is wringing something valuable out of They him. Captain Teach is not the man to. kill the goose that puts by the golden egg. I’m not exactly sorry, either. My father, who is in the bent-wood trade, told me the way Mr. Brearley pushed up prices during the war for the stuff we had to use for aeroplanes was a national scandal. ‘““ Now, about you. You’ve come to my island without being invited, and you'll have to do as you're told. To begin with, do. you want a house?” ‘“‘ Well, I can hardly sleep in the open, can I?” ‘“‘T don’t see why not. self.” ‘‘ May I ask where you: live now?”’ ‘In a house I’ve built for myself out of wreck wood stuff, and I’ve neither room nor inclination for a lodger.”’ Mr. Ghyll was pulling himself together. “ T think there’s a law in the Bahama cays, Miss—er—er—”’ ‘‘ Miss Bahama.’’- “Bahama? Er—oh, I see. Certainly, if you like. Well, as I was saying, Miss Bahama, there’s a law hereabouts which says that if hospitality isn’t offered to you pleasantly, you help yourself to it; gently, of course, but none the less firmly.” “May I ask,” inquired this surprising girl, ‘‘ if you’ve got a pistol on you? A gun, I’ve done it my- I believe you call it in the portions of your own country you probably affect.” “No, I haven’t. I told you [ came away from: the yacht in a hurry.” ° “Now, that’s deplorable. Because you 13 won't be able to shoot back at me when I shoot at you.” She drew a line across the wet sand where the lantern light fell upon it, with her bare toe. ‘ Your territory till to-morrow morning, is to the suthard of that line. I live on the north side. ‘ To-morrow I’l] readjust your boundaries —perhaps. But if you encroach by so much as one yard before breakfast time, Mr. Halton Ghyll, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born. Again, in the film lan- guage of your own land, do you get me?” “I do. But you are very unreasonable. I only wanted—”’ “Quite so. I am unreasonable.” The girl picked up her hurricane lantern, and held it up to illuminate the man’s blond, handsome face. ‘‘ And I grasp what you said you wanted. “We will now part for the evening. Right about turn. Do you hear me? Right about turn. Quick—march. You may halt before you walk into the Atlantic Ocean, which is deep in places.” Miss Mary Arncliffe’s residence on the Bahama cay, to which she had given the somewhat unoriginal name of Maryland, owed its site to a wrecked sponge-boat. The ribs of this craft protruded from the sand. The skin and decking, which had been of soft wood, had mostly disappeared. Mary made up deficiencies in scantling - with other wreckage, filled in walls and roof with clumps of seagrass and sea-thistles, and aétually achieved a door, which, with its necessary frame, she found flung up above high-water mark. A niggardly skylight the wreck already possessed, and the detail that it lacked glass was no detriment in a cli- mate where ventilation was an _ urgent necessity. She christened it—with two chocolates—Maryland Manor. | Once built, Mary stood back from her house, with thumbs in armholes, chewing a - straw, and saw that her house was good. It even achieved a rusty stove and stove- pipe, and though of course cooking in- doors was an impossibility owing to the Maryland temperature, there is no doubt that the stove made for hominess. She built in a narrow shelf for the sea- gull eggs that she knew to be fresh, and a broad shelf for the might-be’s. Her two cCoOmiclbooks C©