The Argosy, April 1912 — page 32: what you’re looking at

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

18 By this time the sound of the clash had died away. I had shaken off my pursuers with ridiculous ease. And now I bent my hurried steps toward the docks and the house where Smith and his passengers had gathered. As I turned out of the short-cut alley to the street before the docks, a shape rose out of its gloom before me; and the point of a half-unseen knife pricked my throat. ‘Stand and deliver!” ordered a voice. I could have laughed. What, in the name of St. Nicholas, the patron of thieves, had I to deliver? “Friend,” I answered unflinchingly be- fore the menacing knife, “I have an empty purse, a half-worn suit (without hat or cloak), and a serviceable, but not especial- ly costly sword in a much scratched scab- bard. I think you have hailed the wrong man.” As I had been talking I had managed, furtively, to raise my arm. Now, as I reached the end of my indifferently drawled words, I suddenly struck upward. My blow caught the highwayman’s arm just below the elbow, knocking the knife to one side. At the same instant my left fist caught him on the chin. Down he went, in a heap. I did not wait for him to recover, but cleared his rolling body with one spring and ran on. , Two minutes later I burst into the house from which, barely an hour before, I had been led by Dogberry and his watchmen. The great room was empty. At my shout a sleepy servant appeared. He told me that all hands had gone aboard their ships a half-hour agone. I ran to the docks which he pointed out to me. There, inquiry from a half-drunk sailor gave me the news that the last of the three ships carrying the Virginia colony had weighed anchor five minutes earlier. For an instant my heart grew light. As- suredly, I had done all in my power to keep my pledge to Smith. If I had failed, despite my best efforts to reach the docks in time, the fault was not mine. I was ab- solved of my promise! Free to take high service under the Earl of Shaftesbury. But the next moment my miserable sense of honor came to the fore again. And al- most without volition I found myself racing at top speed along the river bank. I remembered the section of London from former days. I knew that, a half-mile be- low, there was a sharp curve of the Thames. THE ARGOSY. And, by taking another short cut there, I believed I could reach the river at a point beyond the curve before the last of the three Virginia-bound ships should pass it. So off I ran. And in another five min- utes or so I had come, panting, to the spot I had had in mind. I stood on the muddy bank, straining my eyes across the faintly glimmering gray expanse of water. The black bulk of a ship, moving slow- ly down stream with the tide, all sails set, was in mid-channel. Behind it, less than a furlong, came another vessel of the like size; while, fading away in the gloom far in front, I could barely make out the blot on the water that marked the third and leading craft. Down the river, drawn by the ebb-tide and pushed on by the slight wind that brushed their canvas, were the three Vir- ginia-bound ships; slipping away from England in the darkness of a night which blotted out every vestige of land to scores of homesick eyes that should never look upon England’s green coasts again. Apparently I had reached the bank after the first of the three ships had passed. The second was abreast of me, and the third coming along in the rear. There was no time for thought. Into the ice-cold water I dived and struck out for midstream. The freezing December water bit to my very marrow. It well-nigh shocked my heart and brain into lethargy. For, remember, I was in a glow from my long, hard run. Yes, and I was tired, too. IT had undergone much that day; and I was lately recovered from an attack of camp fever. Yet, with all my strength I struck out; not waiting to remove my clothes, light boots, or sword. A mad feat, I grant you, and one for which I had no desire. Yet my honor and the memory of my unful- filled pledge goaded me on with a lash of scorpions. As I had feared, I reached mid-channel much too late to board the second ship, or to attract its crew’s notice by my water- choked hails. But I found myself straight in the path of the third and last vessel. She was com- ing on so slowly that I was well in front of her. I shouted. But no one answered. She seemed to carry no lookout. And her crew and passengers were evidently astern. Even in that moment, the circumstances struck me as odd. comicoool. (CO