The Argosy, September 1915 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

228 THE Miss Chalmers interrupted the apol- ogy with an angry exclamation. ‘It’s nearly eleven o’clock,”’ she said. “It’s beyond endurance! I wish I hadn’t started.” “Well, we can turn around any time,’”’ remarked the boatman mildly. “But she won't do better than eight miles an hour at the outside. You can play that bet to win.” Miss Chalmers devoted to the boat- man a swift and stormy glance. He irritated her even more than his atro- cious boat. The easy, almost familiar style of his speech was something to which she was unaccustomed — from the lips of common persons. It seemed to her that he assumed a position of equality. A boatman —a egrimy-handed, hat- less, whiskered boatman! A _ person who hired out! She set her jaws tightly and resumed her unsatisfying study of the river. Her dignity checked upon her lips a withering rebuke. More islands were passed and the channel widened somewhat. The pas- senger observed with growing annoy- ance that there were fewer lights ashore. The summer folks were going to bed. High time, she thought; she was tired herself. Nearly half an hour more elapsed, enlivened only by an astonishingly swift movement on the part of the steersman, who uncoiled himself like a spring, flung himself forward, and rescued, with a long and lean arm, the grip that belonged to his passenger just as it was about to slide quietly from the narrow deck into the hos- pitable St. Lawrence. Unceremonious- ly he jammed it into a safer place un- der the gunwale. Then he resumed his lolling posture at the tiller. Miss Chalmers made no comment. Then, after a little, the rhythmical wheeze of the engine was supplanted by a series of irregular, choking gasps, then a sharp popping at broken inter- vals, and then—-silence. The boatman sat up lazily, reached ARGOSY. for the lantern, and held it close to the machinery. The launch carried her momentum for a minute, then swung broadside to the current and drifted contentedly. Miss Chalmers bit her lip. Very deliberately the boatman studied the engine, poking the lantern about and, when it failed to illuminate dark recesses, lighting the stump of ~ candle. Then he spun the fly-wheel. There was no answer. Again and again he spun it, but the engine re- mained inert. After a while he re- sumed his placid and apparently pur- poseless examination of the gasoline monster. “Well, what is the matter now?” demanded a cutting voice. “Engine stopped,” said the boat- man, putting down the lantern and be- ginning to refill his pipe. “Thank you for the information,” said Miss Chalmers icily. “ Why has it stopped? ”’ “T couldn’t begin to tell you— ma’am.”’ There was something about the *“ma’am,”’ drawled out at the end, that peculiarly exasperated her; it seemed to lack the servility that was familiar to her from the lips of servants. “Do you know anything about en- gines?”’ “Not much that’s good.” Miss Chalmers’s temper was rising rapidly. She looked at her watch, then at the dark shores and islands. “How dared you bring me out here if you didn’t— Oh, it’s — it’s — per- fectly outrageous! It’s—” She left the sentence unfinished, seized the lantern, brushed her way past the boatman without so much as a scornful glance, and dropped to her knees in the bottom of the cockpit. The floor was oily and dirty, but Miss Chalmers paid no attention to that. She devoted the next five min- utes wholly to an examination of the engine. The boatman watched and smoked. Item by item, she inventoried the CORMMICLOOOKS (E@)