Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 4 — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

SO ENDS THE DAY. step forward. Her eycs opened. He read fright in them, where he had expected some- thing else, before he realized that she was looking beyond him. Her hands drooped, fell to her sides. ““ Nothing much the matter with Taku,” boomed the skipper’s bass. ‘“ The quinine 4] fix him by morning. How’s she holding up, Badoun?” He had tumed to the binnacle. But how mach had he seen? The mate’s face be- came alert, like the face of a beast that thinks it hears the step of the hunter. Mary Leigh stood as if turned to. stone. She was cold, all save her lips. “Your aunt’s comm’ on deck, Mary.” As the skipper spoke Miss Burton appeared, and the girl went directly to her. Samson faced the captain. “ Man all right, is he? Most of ’em malingerers. Don’t pay to baby. ’em too much, I’ve found.” “ i'm not apt to serve out pap where it ain't wanted,” answered the skipper, with dry emphasis. “I know how to handle my men—and my ship, Mr. Samson.” His eyes looked squarely at the mate. They were gray, and cold as steel. “ We're going below, John,” Miss Burton said. ‘‘I don’t trust this night air.” “T{ shouldn’t wonder but what you were right. I) go with you. Mr. Samson, will you please take the deck?” It was not the mate’s watch for a fuil hour, but he said nothing. After the deck was Clear, save for him and Baedoun, he lit a fresh cheroot, but did not find it to his taste, tossing it into the sea and pacing from port to starboard and back again. He hafi made up his mind that the skipper had seen nothing. If he had he would not have stood tamely by. Unless the presence of both the women had restrained him. The girl, with her fresh coolness, her. dif- ference from the longshore women he had _known, had maddered him, but he had gone Willingly along that path. He had learned, with his knack of piecing such things, that Mary Leigh had a tidy little fortune in her own right. He compared himself complacently with -had suffered it. \ 599 She had not returned his kiss, but she It had roused her, swept her off her feet, if only for a second. He had made the first step successfully. But the path was dangerous. The skipper was not a fool, not a man who let his rights slide. What if Badoun had seen and told? _ The Malays were crafty, and their senses were abnormal. He itched to question the man, but checked himself. “Tl wager he’s never got under her skin,” he assured himself. “As for the two of us, it’s man to man—and may the best win.” And he let his thoughts slide to pleasanter prospects. He saw himself owning his vessel, as Martin owned the Mary, making a good income. out of her, cruising, prosperous among the islands. But there was no image of Mary Leigh in the cabin of his ship. ‘Til not be fool enough to take ker to sea,” he told himself, with a muttered laugh, as: he found a+third chereot to his taste, and lounged by the taffrail, sending out puffs of fragrant smoke into the air that were wafted to the sensitive nostrils of Badoun, making them quiver, like the nostrils of a dog. But Badoun had seen nothing, whatever he had sensed. And, if he had seen, he weuld not have told the captain. Presently, Sampson slipped below to his cabin. As he passed down the poop-lad- der he glimpsed the figures of Miss Burton and the skipper in the cuddy, built under the poop for dining and general assembly room. The girl was not with them. He descended to the lower cabin, and saw the door of her state-room closed, go- ing on to his own. There he unearthed a botde of whisky from underneath the mat- tress of his bunk, and took a long drink, filling a flask to take on deck. Inside of an hour he had finished it. His reveries had become inflamed,. the liquor had fed his sensuous theughts, never very dormant. When he tossed the last drops down and put away the flask in his trousers pocket for future tipplings, he was in a glow of confidence, sure of conquest, sneering at the chances of the skipper® against such a man as he was: Don Juan of a score of Jax seaports, Original froma = C(O) lOOOLKK CO THE OHIO STATE UNI