Argosy All-Story Weekly — "Sea Marauders" — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

Byes fy } 1 ; PO PA TN eC TM Te EME Teo TOT AH Re ARR NE Ney 492 the deus ex machina creak too loudly. The old gentlemen end the discussion in a long wrangle in which each ac- cuses the other of lacking ideas about the right way to do the trick of making the young folks fall in love. CHAPTER VII. KITIKAT KEY. eastern extremity of Florida where Gerald Amadon had elect- ed to spend the winter, had at one time been called Palm Key, because of the profusion of palms which lifted their gracious fluffy heads into the azure sky; but it had been rechristened after a ie small island off the south- ‘Gerald had sailed over it one after- noon in an airplane and seen its fan- tastic and amusing resemblance to a great, sprawling, sleepy cat. Sailing over it the next morning at sunrise, he had dropped down a bottle of perfect- ly good champagne in its precise cef- ter, thereupon uttering the words: “‘T pronounce thee Kitikat Key.” His prodigality with real cham- pagne, in this instance, might cause an eyebrow here and there to rise, hence it will be hastily explained that, while Kitikat Key, being within the borders of the United States of America, was legally dry, it was, in actuality, ex- ceedingly wet. It was a handy stop- ping place for those purveyors of bot- tled liquids of high potency en route from the giant warehouses of Nassau to thirsty gullets in the Florida hotels. Gerry was friendly with them all. Hardly a day passed when some cham- pagne smuggler did not pause at Kiti- kat Key for water, gasoline, or merely for gossip. This winter the coast was patrolled by airplanes, and he would have few winter visitors. But he did not mind. He had had altogether too much civili- zation lately, and a long stretch of lonesomeness appealed to him. He would have ample time to recover from ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. a long autumn of drinking, and for months on end he would enjoy the blessed boon of girllessness.- There were, to be sure, girls on Kitikat Key, but they were not the kind of girls who would torment him with their -unde- sirable attentions. At the western tip of Kitikat was a small village of fishermen and their families, descendants, some said, of a band of English pirates who had roved these waters years and years before.. These descendants formed now a re- spectable, orderly fishing colony, who minded their own business, and with. whom Gerry had only a nodding ac- quaintance. Most of his groceries he bought in a little commissary at Set- tlement Point, as the village was called, and he called there now and then for such mail as came for him from the North. Kitikat Key was some four miles and a fraction in length, and between his bungalow and boathouses at one end of the key, and the settlement at the other, no living thing dwelled ex- cept the pines, the mosquitoes and birds of passage, feathered and human. His was a splendid isolation. ‘The bungalow had been built on the taper- ing point of the key in a handsome grove of coconut palms. Waves washed the shore on three sides, which he could view of an afternoon from his deep veranda. On the south shore was a little cove, naturally protected from the robustious northeasters of the win- ter months, and here were his boat- houses for his speedboat, his catboat, and a small assortment of rowboats, surfboats and canoes. It was, that tip of Kitikat, a little corner of tropical paradise,- where a man could dream and loaf and enjoy life at its fullest. And all of this Gerry heartily in- tended to do. He wanted to revel in the golden delight of the Florida sun after the dreary dank fall in New York. He wanted tod sit for hours watching the changing complexion of — €omicbooks.co ag Oe pee ae «a a gan e > ote f° ne ees (2 ere Smee ir ee 2» i PR ROS,