Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 4 — page 96: what you’re looking at

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

602 echoed the strokes upon the ship’s bell. He added the invariable formula, old as the first merchantman manned by English sailors: So ends this day. ee CHAPTER IU. MUTINY. N hour later he was still there, the lamp turned low. He saw Pinck- ney mount the ladder after the clock had chimed two bells, heard him on deck, then another tread, and saw, against the flood of moon that now washed the main deck, the tall figure of Samson descending. The mate hesitated outside the dimly-lit cuddy, then turned in. He had his own log to write up. The skipper turned up the wick of the lamp, and the two men faced each other. The reek of liquor was dis- tinct. Anger, long groping for pretext, flared up im the captain. “T don’t like my offioers drinking on duty,” he said. “ There’s no harm in a dram, for entertainment, or in emergency, but, outside of that, it’s against my orders.’ Samson, his brain fumed with the liquor, his sneering mood toward the skipper still uppermost, said nothing, but his look was eloquent of resentment. Martin's tone had cut like the lash of a whip. ‘And I won’t have you bullying the Malays,” went on the skipper. As his choler rose he smothered it with the ice of his outer mood. “As you have done. You're new to these seas, or you’d have more sense. A free Malay will not toler- ate it. Neither will I.” “Free Malay, heli!” drawled Samson. “ A loafing lot of scum.” “That is enough, sir. I am the judge of discipline on this ship. I own her.” “ The hell you do? Own all aboard her? Perhaps not as much as you fancy you do.” A red light danced in the cold steel of the captain’s eyes. “Just what do you mean?” he asked, evenly. Samson leered. . * You know damned well what I mean.” The table was between them. The red ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. spark grew to a flame as the skipper vaulted across it, straight for Samson. The mate caught the heavy inkstand and hurled it. It hit the captain’s foot, and the con- tents spurted over the table and the red carpet. Then Samson staggered back from the impact of the skipper’s buJk, striking out at him as he went. The blow glanced off Martin’s muscle-sheathed arm, and the “next second the two had closed, reeling about the cabin. The skipper’s volcano had seethed over. Yet he fought coolly, his detenmmmation made. The chance had offered; he would show the mate gace and for all who was the better man. They smashed against the table, hurling it to one side as each Strove for a fair blow. There were some antiquated cutlases in a rack on the mast, with a native kris or two. The guns wap kept in the main ca- bin, and in Sykes’s quarters, a pistol for each of the white men, never used aboard the Mary. The skipper’s weight and push bore back the mate against the mast, and he grasped a Malay knife, curving, keen. His arm swept up, and the captain pounced upon his wrist, bending down with resistless foroe, down, and back, until the mate yelled with pain, and the weapon fell to the floor. The skipper kicked it under the table with his heel, and sent in a slogging blow that caught the dodging mate high on the cheek, bringing a red flush that would soon turn to an angry bruise. It was delivered with all his strength, backed by his weight, and it temporarily stunned Samsoa. In a flash the captain’s arms were about him, under his own, compressing his chest. He flogged and thrashed, but he was help- less in the grip that was strong and merci- less as that of a bear. The strength oozed out of him. His ribs cracked, his lungs were constricted unti] he could taste blood in his throat. Red ‘waves of it roiled in front of-him. The cuddy reeled. He came-to lying across the table, breath a pain, his limbs still pithless; the skipper standing by with folded arms, his breath even, his gaze sardonic. ‘é Get up and down to your bunk,” said C riQIt altroma - OHIO STATE | WE uy LDOOK Com