Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 195: what you’re looking at

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

a “not come to the surface at all. TEACH: PIRATE DE LUXE. been brought up. You remember sinking the Loochow?”’ “ Mail-boat from China way? Yes. I invited her to surrender. She thought she had the heels of me and put on speed. Well, - ghe hadn’t, that’s all.” “Quite so. My son was on board, my only son. .He was a minor mandarin. He had earned a button, whose value you as a foreign devil wouldn’t understand, but which I, a failure, was very proud of. Where is my son?” “* Drowned, I’m afraid. Fortune of war, Mr. Li. Sorry, but I must ask you to cut out the sentiment. I’m a busy man.” “ And I, thanks to you, have no son to do honor to me when I am dead. So before paying for those ships you have strung out there among the yellow weed, I am going to have another settlement.” Li Chang tapped gently with his heavy felt-soled shoe; and presumably the sig- nal was well-watched for. The queer-look- ing steamer snapped into instant life. Screens dropped, and a dozen rifles with evil Eastern faces behind them converged their aim at Teach’s head. : The Chinese was quick, but Teach was a man used to surprises. Also, in spite of his bigness, he was remarkably agile. He ducked, darted astern, crossed the decking at.a jump, vaulted the rail with the help of a hand, and flopped somewhat ungrace- fully into the vivid blue water alongside. - A hail-storm of nickel-covered bullets skated over the rusty steel deck behind him. He did not come to the surface and made for his own well-manned boat which was hanging on to the foot of the China-. To all appearance he did Then Chinese from above shot down the men in the boat. | man’s ladder. About that moment, too, the Asiatic steamer spat a torpedo from an _ under- water tube on her broadside, and silvery bubbles streaked out in its wake. On board the Littondale the watch had spotted these things in a moment. Her discipline was always perfect. The much bediamonded Mr. Evans slammed a sparkling bunch of enormous fingers on to the action stations gongs, and men ran, and screens fell. 569 But the Whitehead, at forty: knots an hour, had only a quarter of a mile to cover, and got home in the pirate’s engine-room before a gun could be loaded and trained. And mighty was the crash. It pretty near- ly cut the Littondale in half. Even then discipline held, and the pirates were as plucky as rats. They fought the two ends of their ship as long as their gun-muzzles were above water, and as they were firing with six-inch weapons at point- blank range, théy had that Clyde-built Chinaman blown into a fishing-net and sinking in style before they, too, started to blow out their last bubbles. Also they remembered Teach’s fad—they never thought of it as more than a fad, being simple sailor-folk—and when only the shattered plates and gratings of the fiddley were left to stand upon, broke out Admiral Teach’s version of an Irish Republican flag . at both trucks. Thereafter the balance of them died, and the flags were sucked down among erupting gardens of the yellow weed and the whirlpools which the dying pirate- ship belched up as she lurched to the floor of the Carib Sea. “By gad!” said Lord Raisghyll. ‘“ ‘You’ve made me tell that fellow Teach a lie. You promised him a straight deal through McGregor, and I guaranteed to him that all Chinese kept their word. If it hadn’t been for me you wouldn’t have got him, you dirty yellow rogue. He'd a hunch Chinese would be crooked.”’ Li Chang shook hands with himself in- side his blue sleeves. “‘ Am I to take that as the British cabinet’s official thanks to ‘me for ridding them of a pest they couldn’t Do the means matter catch themselves? at alle’”’ | ‘ For a yellow man, apparently, no. For an Englishman, emphatically yes. As re- gards the cabinet, I’m not hete in any offi- cial capacity. Probably they’d apprave. A good percentage of them aren’t English, and the odds are they are pleased enough to be rid of him, and don’t care a match about the method. And now what’s next?” “This ship is sinking.”’ ‘“ That’s obvious.” “And as we've a large crew of my own EOMRIC OG UN S Colin