Argosy, Vol. 117, No. 3 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

324 And you’re going back after more?” His forehead was still creased with puzzlement. ‘‘ Wal, I’m bein’ with ye, eyes or no eyes, an’ I’ll keep tabs on ye, Bill Simms, by day and night. You can lay to that, you slimy- hearted swab!” His voice had risen again. Rainey saw the sweat standing out on the captain’s forehead as he answered: “Of course you'll come, Jim. No need for you to talk this way.” “ No need to talk! By the eternal, what I’ve got to say’s bin steamin’ in me for fourteen months o’ blackness, an’ it’s com- in’ out, now it’s started! Who’s this man, who was talkin’ with ye when I come aboard?” He wheeled directly toward the man with the Vandyke, who still sat motionless, ap- parently calm, looking on as if at a play that might turn out to be either comedy or tragedy. ‘“That’s Dr. Carlsen. He’s to, be sur- geon this trip, Jim,” said Simms deprecat- ingly, though he darted a look at Rainey half suspicious, half resentful. Rainey, on the hint, turned toward the ladder quietly enough, but Lund had nipped him by the biceps before Rainey had taken a step. “You'll stay right here,” said Lund, “while I tell you an’ this Doc Carlsen what kind of a man Simms is, with his poke full of gold and me with the price of my last meal spent two hours ago. I won’t spin out the yarn. “T rescued an Aleut off a bit of a berg one time. There warn’t much of him left to rescue. Hands an’ feet an’ nose was frozen so he lost ’em, but the pore devil was grateful, an’ he told me something. Told about an island north of Bering Strait, west of Kotzebue Sound, where there was gold on the beach richer and thicker than it ever lay at Nome. I makes for it, gits close enough for my Aleut to recognize it— it ain’t an easy place to forget for one who has eyes—an’ then we’re blown south, an’ we git into ice an’ trouble. The Aleut dies, an’ I lose my ship. But I bin close enough to git the reckonin’ of that island. “Finally I land at Seattle, broke. I meet up with the man called Hard Luck Simms. Also they called him Honest Simms THE ARGOSY. those days. Some said his honesty account- ed for his hard luck. I like him, an’ I finally tell him about my island. I put up the reckonin’, an’ he supplies the Karluck, grub, an’ crew. ‘““Simms’s luck is still agin him. The Karluk gits into ice, gits nipped an’ carried north, ’way north, with wind an’ current, frozen tight in a floe. It looks like we’ve got to winter there. Mind ye, I’ve given Honest Simms the reckonin’ of the island. We go out on the ice after bear, though the weather’s threatenin’, for we’re short of meat. An’ we kill a Kadiak bear. Me— I'll never stand for the shootin’ of another bear if I can stop it. ‘“T’ve bin havin’ trouble with my eyes. Right along. I’m on the floe not eighty yards from Simms. No, not sixty! It was me killed the bear, an’ we’re goin’ back to the schooner for asled. I stayed behind to. bleed the brute. All of a sudden, like it always hits you, snow-blindness gits me, an’ I shouts to Honest Simms. I’m blind, with my eyeballs on fire, an’ the fire burnin’ back inter my brain. “Along comes a Point Arrow blister. That’s a gale that breeds an’ bursts of a second out of nowhere. It gathers up all the loose snow an’ ice crystals an’ drives ’em in a whirlwind. Presently the wind sturts the ice to buckin’ an’ tremblin’ like a jelly under you, splitting inter lanes. You lose your direction even when you got eyes. I’m left in it by that bilge-blooded skunk, blind on the rockin’, breakin’ floe, while he scuds back to the schooner with his men. That’s Honest Simms! Jim Lund’s left be- hind, but Honest Simms has the position of the island.” “1 didn’t hear you call out you were blind, Lund. The wind blew your words away. I didn’t know but what you were as right as the rest of us. The gale shut us all out from each other. We found the schoon- er by sheer luck before we perished. We looked for you—but the floe was broken up. We looked—-” “Shut up!” bellowed Lund. “ You sailed inside of twenty-four hours, Honest Simms. The natives told me so later, when I could understand talk agin. D’ye know what saved me? The bear! I stumbled over the (EO) DOO AMC S (C@