Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

QUEEN OF THE NIGHT. “From a hurricane, be gad!” Captain Jarvy snapped. “ Unless you’re axin’ for to see my clearance papers!” “Ah! No! But it ain’t generally axin too much to find out where a ship’s called at.” “Well, our last port of call, Mr. ‘Ost, was the Spanish Main. Put that down in your register if you like.” The mate and the boatswain exchanged mute glances of surprise. Their master was in a strange mood. “The Spanish Main, skipper?” the inn- keeper said, scratching his bald head. “ Where’s that at?” “The Caribbean Sea, Puerto Cortes, Bel- ize, Barranquilla. Ain’t that the Spanish Main, mates?” The boatswain and Mr. Grimpen burst out laughing at their master’s pleasantry: “Tt sure was what they called it in the old days, skipper!” Again the innkeeper scratched his moist head. ‘I'll tell you'gents,” he began hum- bly. “TI hate to refuse lodging to—” “‘You’re sayin’ you’re loaded up?” the skipper shouted so loudly that Herzog shrank back as if fearing a blow. He changed his tone. “No, sir, no I ain’t sayin’ I’m loaded up. Not exactly. Though where I’m goin’ to put three of you, I—you see if it was only one—that is—”’ “We want one room—no matter about the bunks—one room, mine host, unless—” the skipper softened his voice, but for some reason it seemed much more compelling, “unless you want to stand there before our face and tell us as how you won’t mix with gents that puts down a hurricane as their address!” The innkeeper paused before answering, with a very definite realization of the threat couched in this speech. His yellow face turned wet as he looked, bewildered, from the tall boatswain to the sneaky, pale-eyed, smiling Mr. Grimpen. He looked to them as if for refuge; he was mortally afraid of catching the skipper’s eye. The boatswain’s clear gray eyes, the only human touch in the three faces, gave him courage; the little man was finally able to modulate his voice and announce calmly: b 645 “Come along, mates. I’ show you a room up in the eaves of the house. What you say or do there can never be heard nor seen.” CHAPTER II. A DIVISION—AND TROUBLE, HE skipper and his mate and man TT were shown into an upstairs room of = the lodging house. Herzog, the pro- prietor, stayed on the threshold rubbing his clammy hands, balancing himself on his feet as if prepared to jump backward at any moment. He stood there, his face wrinkled with every mark of suspicion, alarm, irreso- lution, until the door was closed upon him. The three mariners, having barred it, gath- ered about a table on which Tom Yarre had placed his sea chest, and from then on acted on the correct supposition that the proprie- tor was listening at the keyhole. The window was shuttered and a lamp on the table turned up until its ragged wick smoked. The amber light clung about it— a dim halo hazy with mosquitoes, flying ants and moths. Without any preliminary remarks the skipper opened the chest, while Mr. Grim- pen, the suave and complacent mate, seated himself at one end of the table, folded his arms, smiled and all but purred like a cat watching its master pour out a bowl of cream. Tom Yarre, the boatswain, re- mained standing, his cap brushing the cob- webs of the ceiling, his head in the dark except for the spark of a black Porto Rican cheroot and a gleam of yellow light on his full throat and its scar. The first view of the open chest displayed a flash of crimson shawls, silks, serapes and Spanish lace mantillas. The colors were so resplendent that it seemed as if they re- flected the rays of the lamp upward, cast- ing a flush over the greedy faces of Captain Jarvy and the purring Mr. Grimpen. The young boatswain could scarcely be expected to show any enthusiasm; shawls and se- rapes, to his way of thinking, were worth- less antiguities. Captain Jarvy stuck his hairy paw into this mesh of silk and embroideries and COMMICGLOOOkKS (C@