Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

436 ARGOSY AND RAILROAD MAN’S MAGAZINE. This whimsical reflection evidently touched the chords of sentimentality in his paradoxical make-up — chords with which he was well supplied on occasion—and al- most with tears in his voice he essayed to plead with me again. ~ “No, doc, it ain’t philos’phy. It’s like a buttin’ yer dome into the jawr of a man- eater shark, into a school of jell’fish that “ll sting ye to death. Stab my guts if ’tain’t! Better come along of me back t’ the old Irene, the cap’, an’ Miss Dor’thy—” I bundled him into the boat and shoved it vigorously through the surf. Then I watched the powerful, methodical strokes of his oars till a bend in the coast-line blot- ted him from my sight. After all, I meditated, Mankus bore me no real grudge, and I believed I could de- pend on him to return with water and ra- tions, unless Dorothy should chance to be- tray too much solicitude for my welfare. Yet it would take a pretty powerful jolt to convince him that I was a rival to be feared. He would mistake her attitude for anxiety over George Letcher; an anxiety partly real, partly feigned, for he solaced himself with the belief that she was “ play- ing up” to Letcher just to “ git him riled and jealous.” : In Mankus’s mind Letcher was the goat, and, therefore, the rest of us would be spared the effect of his peculiar jealousy for some time. But in the future I foresaw complications. If Mankus ever got it into his “ dome” that I was trying to win the girl, and had a fair chance of success, I should find him a powerful and a relentless foe. When darkness fell I went along the rocks toward Ulmquist’s camp. It was a nasty trip through marsh and jungle. If all was fair in love, why must I be bound by a code which George Letcher as well as Mankus had already violated? Why was I taking all this trouble to save an unwor- thy rival for a girl whom I had hoped to deprive him of later? It was like betting two rival poker hands. I came to the con- clusion that the time-honored adage, “ all’s fair in love,” was originally invented by dishonor and shiftlessness to cover their own weaknesses. Now comes the exciting part of my ad- venture! While floundering through a salt marsh, some distance inland, I thought I heard the sweep of oars. This suspicion was verified when I reached the neck of the promontory near Ulmquist’s camp; ° for, instead of finding the two lifeboats, there I saw but one boat. At this point a low sand-bar fringed with betel palms received the shock of the surf and left-a strip of comparatively calm wa- ter between it and the fern-covered ledges of rock. These ledges rose by easy stages to the foot of the cliff, a mile inland. Ulmquist and most of the men had evi- dently gone off in the long-boat, leaving Poggio, Tack, and Omura to guard the sup- plies and the jolly-boat, which lay in the angle of the sand-bar, its painter fastened to a stick of driftwood thrust in the sand. Wedged in a crevice of a handy rock stood a soup kettle; beneath it a fire of driftwood and newly cut timber had nearly burned itself out.. There remained only the ends of a few green fagots and a generous pile of embers, the ruddy glow of which lit up the faces of the three men who squatted on blankets about it. : Poggio was leaning against his sea-chest, the lid of which had been propped open a few inches with a stick to make a head- rest.. A ludicrously short clay pipe hung from his yellow teeth, and the soles of his bare feet were stretched out toward the fire. . Tack, who lay near him, was naked from the. waist up. He had scooped out a snug Hollow in the sand, and spread his blanket in it. At present he was engaged in the divert- ing pastime of chewing tobacco with great gusto and squirting the juice upward in the direction of the soup kettle; and whenever he succeeded in plastering its sooty sides with trickling saliva he wagged his woolly head and roared with tremendous glee at the idea. Omura crouched at some distance. His little. red dictionary peeped from his belt. He muttered to himself while he slowly stroked the tawny fur of Queechee, the ship’s cat, which he had brought away with him, much against that fat and selfish crea- ture’s will. “8 comicbooks:com oe