Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 3 — page 57: what you’re looking at

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

“Bet as Village Bay is out of beunds in the present competition, we needa’t weery abeut that. You may take it they're both impossible to reach.” “Then I’m going to Saay,” said Teach. “T tell you it can’t be done.” “ That’s highly likely. But I’m going to have a hard tey for it. Se here we'll say good-by. I’m tremendously obliged, old man, for the way you’ve stuck to me. -I hope you don’t get into a bother over it.” I sha’n’t. If youre going to be dammed fool enough to try this Soay stunt, I’m geing to be ditto, and bere and now VH bet you an even fiver that if we swim off level, I’m there ahead of you.” ‘“ That’s abet,’ said Teach. ‘ Come alang. Let’s get out of this before we have the navy smelling round.” Up the gray grassed slopes they went again, with Richardson’s skuas darting menacingly past their heads, and Leach’s fark-tailed petrels _ skimming in and out of the puffin’ holes. The air was bitter with the scent of the fulmars, and sour with the general aroma af guano. Even the never-failmg scour of the Atlantic breeze can never rid St. Kilda of its scent. Mereover, they scratched themselves vigeroualy as they walked. The St Ki- dian flea is the most voracious of his kind, and in namber he excels the sands an the sez’s shores. Then they came to racks, greasy with wet, and slimed by sea-fowl. The chimb grew dangerous. But the peer was a climber and’ the sailor was a sailor amd they avoided accident. So m dune time, climbing by crevice and chimmey, they came near the cliff foot opposite Seay. fiercely cocked, chittering after them. The wren knew that her peculiar eggs were worth five shillings apiece in the collectors’ market, amd mstook them for dealers’ agents. No other human being, the St. Kildian wren decided, would be fools enotigh to climb to that desperate place in the rocks. The last twenty feet was sheer, with green water churning itself into white at the feot. “And here,” said Lord Rais- ghyll, ‘‘ is where I take off my boots.” TEACH: PIRATE DE LUXE. Digitized by (Go ogle 309 . “ Bide a bit,” said the pimate and took owt his watch. “Let me try and think out the run of the tides. Heave overboard that nest that’s near you, and let’s see what happens— Yes, I thought so. “The fload’s still making, and if we got in the ditch now, we should go the wrong way at the rate—the rate of seme five miles an hour. Also it isn’t dark, and the navy’s got eyes.” “ And we should be canspicuows? Quite so. Rart nantes in gurgite vaste. I got into Pop at Eton for being the only man who ever construed that bit of Vergil wrong without getting licked. I won’t offer you a cigarette, as I know you always stick to your beastly pipe. “T wish my case was water-tight. Bet- ter fettison it here, I suppose. Every ounce of extra weight is going to tell tre- mendously. “Tf that double-yoked wren doesn’t stop cursing us,” said Teach, “I shal] heave a rock at it. I never saw the like of it be- fore, but I’m sailor enough to dislike any fowl” S ; disapproval. ” The swim, when they came to it, was a desperate one. There was littl wind, but in that narrow strait between the islets the Atlantic boiled, and swirled, and sucked over the raecky bottom like a mill race; it displayed every variety of tide-rip and overfall; and the swimmers were, as often as not, battling their way among fish, ten feet beneath the yeasty surface. More- over, despite its Gulf Stream origin, the | Water carried a deadly chill. Both were hardy athletes, in the exact prime of life; and they were tmed and stubborn fighters; or they never could have stoed it. As it was, they made Soay by the barest inch, and for a pin’s value the other way, the tearing fingers of the sea would have torn them past even the outer fringes of its weed. But the weed found its way into their drowning clutches, and each, on the shoul- der of a swell, dragged himself up onto the rock. There is an iron peg let into the stone above that landing-place on Soay. Teach pointed a shaking finger at it. THE OHIO SPATE UNS OLE books. Com