Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 87: what you’re looking at

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

KICKING TOM McGEE. roused resentment in Battling Burke, but the Irishman was blessed with tact. His nearest cronies never guessed that he had anything but lickspittle admiration for what he styled ‘‘ me grand young gentlemen.” Between times, in the gymnasium, Burke was forever regaling his aristocrats with yarns about the life afloat. “* Aye, it’s a trip foreign that ye young gentlemen are needing. No man would stay ashore if he’d ever had one touch of the glorious life at sea. Have any of ye young gentlemen ever been off sailin’?” “You bet,” answered Cecil Catty. “Dicky Dawson and I have been on a yachting cruise, all the way to Chester, aboard the Pinkey. Took the girls along, and we sure did have a happy time.” | In season and out of season, with his most plausible brogue, Burke kept harping on the call of the sea. One fine day, when the whitecaps were dancing down the harbor, he flung up the gymnasium window and looked forth en- raptured. ‘““ Aye, me young gentlemen,” he said, “ ve’re fools to be sticking around a stink- ing, measly little office, pen pushing from morning till night, when ye might be cruis- in’ over the green seas. Just think o’ the time that ye could be havin’ sailin’ before the winds, visitin’ the heathen lands, and kissin’ the girls under the palm trees. [ wished I was young again like ye. If I was, ye wouldn’t s*e my heels for smoke, I’d be off so fast fer a ship goin’ foreign.” With spring fever in the air, to add to the wanderlust, Cecil Catty, employed at the cable office, got heartily sick of being cooped up inside. He communicated his sentiments to his crony, Dicky Dawson, a clerk articled to a legal firm. Dawson ex- pressed himself in full accord. That yacht- ing cruise had foreordained that these twain should be nothing less than master mar- iners. ‘‘ What’s a miserable lawyer’s office com- pared to a tall ship?” quoth Dicky Daw- son. Catty and Dawson were Burke’s two most ardent disciples. In season and out of season they began to knock the settled life of the landlubber, and to praise the 7138 roving vagabondism of the sea. So, in time, among Burke’s gentlemen pupils the interest in boxing gradually waned. Cecil Catty was the first to suggest a change. “ Why not shift over from a course in boxing to a course in seaman- ship?” Battling Burke would not hear of such a thing. But with the general clamor he was forced, with apparent reluctance, to trans- form his boxing school into a nautical academy. ‘Of course ye know, me young gentle- men, this thing has got to be kept secret. We don’t want to ’ave all the riffraff talkin’ about what we’re doin’.” In the interest of secrecy, the aristocrats’ class was shifted from the gymnasium to the back of MacDougall’s abandoned dis- tillery, by the esplanade. A model of a full rigged ship, a piece of a main brace, a sailing chart, an old capstan, a wheel, and binnacle, together with a few odds and ends such as rope, blocks and tackle, con- stituted the furnishings of the old vat room transformed into a nautical laboratory. On the first day, Burke gave a lesson in steering, in this wise: “Now, then, me young gentlemen, I’m goin’ to learn ye how to steer a ship. There’s two sides to a ship—port and starboard. Port is left, starboard is right. That’s aisy, ain’t it?” “ Nothing easier, skipper.” ‘““ Now, then, all there is to steerin’ is this. When I sez, port yer ’elm, ye shoves down wid yer left. When I sez, starboard yer elm, ye shoves down wid yer right. Could anything be aisier than that?” “Easy as rolling off a log,” chirped Catty. “* Easy as rolling off a log,” repeated the instructor. ‘“‘ Now, then, Mr. Catty, will you take the ’elm?” The cable office clerk stood at the wheel, a-thrill with navigator’s pride. “Starboard yer ’elm!” Catty shoved down with his right. * Port yer ’elm.” Catty swung the spokes to his left. All the others had a go at the steering, while Burke went into rhapsodies over their transcendent skill. Eomichooks.com —