The Argosy, Vol. 82, No. 3 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

SHIPS OF STRIFE. remembered the scene outside the Custom House, he now seemed to be in a very strange place indeed—so strange that he doubted his own senses. His extremely misty vision gave him a queer picture of a board shelf just above his head. ‘The bed that his fingers touched, as he half unconsciously groped out, felt strangely unlike the soft, springy couch in his room at the club. A dull glimmer of wavering, streaky light eave him clear sight of nothing except that queer board shelf above him. But his head buzzed and ached, while his arms were swollen and raw to the touch. He remem- bered that terrible right. “Tf must have struck a gorilla or a stone man,” he thought, trying to bring order out of the chaos in his mind. He dully closed his eyes to rest the aching nerves. He hoped that his man would have his coffee ready soon. This was— “For grog is our larboard and starboard, Our mainmast, our—” “Shut yer gob, ye guzzlin’ swine!”’ The new voice was accompanied by something which Blake later learned to know as a serving-mallet. The mallet whizzed out of the darkness and landed with a crunching smack against the head of the singer. “Blast yer soul!” swore the victim furi- ously. His bottle flew through the air, smashing to a thousand slivers of glass, and filling the room with the odor of cheap whisky. The rank smell combined with other smells and formed an inharmonious whole. Blake started up with a shock of realiza- tion. His head bumped the shelf above, and he fell back thoroughly awakened. He put out a leg and felt for the floor—then halted abruptly and stared. A shape rose up before him; a huge foot trod on his hand; with lurid oaths and a tremendous scuffling, the guzzling singer was hauled down from above Blake, to fall with a crash and crouch on the floor. The larger shape towered above him. “Hey! Let up, Cutlip! Let up, yuh big stiff!” . The cracked voice broke into whimpering as a heavy boot smashed through weakly guarding arms and landed forcibly on head and ribs, time and again. ‘“T’row bottles at me, will ye? There, ye hog!” 389 Cutlip seized the edge of the bunk above Blake in both hands; then he brought both feet savagely down upon the bottle-heaver, who groaned once and relapsed into limp insensibility. His conqueror stepped to the middle of the floor, flapped his arms in grotesquely drunken imitation of wings, and crowed. “Urrk-uh-uh-uh-urrk! I’m Cutlip Sulli- van, an’ I chew ’em up raw! I eat alligator bait an’ sharkskin fer dinner! I’m the cock 0’ the fe’c’s’le, by cripes—any other son of a pig want to present me wid a bottle?” Feeling that this query was hardly ad- dressed to him, Jack Blake swung his legs to the floor, slowly and painfully. ‘Will you tell me where I am and how I got there?” he inquired thickly. Even to himself his voice sounded strange. His throat and lips were swollen and dry. As he tried to stand up he tottered—the floor felt detached from everything and he sat down again heavily. Cutlip Sullivan stood staring, his mouth half open as if for another crow, and his arms half raised. As he took in the details of Blake’s attire, a grin of delight creased his scarred and unholy visage. He stepped closer for a better view. “By cripes! Look what’s wid us! Ain’t he the purty critter!” Jack looked down at himself with a faint grin. His evening dress was torn and mud- spattered, and his broad shirt-bosom_be- fouled with blood. He tenderly felt his fea- tures, and realized that they must be one mottled, all-embracing bruise. But wonder grew in him as he stared around. He was in a reeking, half dark wholly filthy cavern of unpainted wood, tri- angular in shape. Two double rows of lit- tered bunks ran along the two longer sides to the apex. Against the shorter side stood a noisome tin oil Jamp which made little light, but much smell. A floor upon which a self-respecting pig would develop insomnia; and a grinding, smashing din of heavy chain swinging from side to side in huge, rusted iron pipes—these completed Blake’s mental picture. And over against him stood Cutlip Sullivan—a mighty ruffian with a split lip that sneered perpetually at the world. ‘Sure, I kin tell where ye are,” grinned Cutlip, in drunken and ghastly mirth. “ ’Tis the good ship C. H. Marshall ye’re aboard of. Steelfist Charley Marshall’s her skipper, an’ she’s a hellship from Hades!” COPMICGLOOKS (E@)