Argosy, Vol. 117, No. 3 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

A MAN TO “ Here, what’s this?” and the doctor’s cutting in, low and eager; then he collapsed, his head falling forward on his outstretched arms. CHAPTER IL. A DIVIDED COMPANY. T was not the first time that Rainey had been on a ship, a sailing ship, and at-sea. Whenever possible his play-hours had been spent on a little knockabout sloop that he owned jointly with another man, both of them members of the Corinthian Club. While the Curlew had riade no blue-water voyages, they had sailed her more than once up and down the California coast on offshore regattas and pleasure-trips, and, lacking experience in actual navigation, Rainey was a pretty handy sailorman for an amateur. So, as he came out of the grip of the drug that had been given him, slowly, with a brain-pan that seemed overstuffed with cotton and which throbbed with a dull, persistent ache—with a throat that seemed to be coated with. ashes, strangely con- tracted—a nauseated stomach—eyes that saw things through a haze—limbs that ached as if bruised—the sounds that beat their way through his sluggish conscious- ness were familiar enough to place him almost instantly and aid his memory’s flickering film to reel off what had hap- pened. As he lay there in a narrow bunk, watch- ing the play of light that came through a port-hole beyond his line of vision, noting in this erratic shuttling of reflected sunlight the roll and pitch of cabin walls, listening to the low boom of waves followed by the swash alongside that told him the Karluk was bucking heavy seas, a slow rage mas- tered him, centered against the doctor with the sardonic smile and Captain Simms, who Rainey felt sure had tacitly approved of the doctor’s actions. He remembered Lund’s exclamation of, ‘Here, what’s this?’—the question of a blind man who could not grasp what was happening—and acquitted him. Ww They had deliberately kidnaped him, HIS MATE. 327 shanghaied him, because they did not choose to trust him, because they thought he might print the story of the island treas- ure beach in his paper, or babble of it and start a rush to the new strike of which he had seen proof in the gold dust streaming from the poke. He had been willing to suppress the yarn, Rainey reflected bitterly, his intentions had been fair and square in this situation forced upon him, and they had not trusted him. They were taking no chances, he thought, and suddenly wondered what position’ the girl would take in the matter. He could not think of her approving it. Yet she would naturally side with her father, as she had done against Lund’s accusations. And Rainey suspected that there was something back of Lund’s charge of desertion. The girl’s face, her graceful] figure, the tones of her voice, clung in ‘his still palsied recol- lection a long time’before ‘he. could dismiss it and get round to the main factor of his imprisonment—ww/at were they going to do with him? There was a ‘fortune in sight. For gold. men forget the obligations of life and law in civilization; they revert to savage’ type, and their minds and, actions are’ swayed by the primitive urge of lust. Treachery, selfishness, cruelty, crime breed from the shining particles even before they are in actual sight and touch. Rainey knew’ that. He had read many true yarns that bad come down from the frozen north, in fram the deserts-and the mountains, tales of the mining records of the: West. He mistrusted the doctor. The man had drugged him. He was a man whose pro- fession, when the mind was warped, belit- tled life. Captain Simms had been charged with leaving a blind man on a broken floe. Lund was the type whose passions left him ruthless. The crew—they would be bound by shares in the enterprise, a rough lot, daring much and caring little for anything beyond their own narrow horizons. The girl was the only redeeming feature of the situation. Was it because of her—ii might be be- cause of her special pleading—that they had not gone farther? Or were they still GoOmiGchdooks (C@