Argosy, Vol. 117, No. 3 — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

A MAN TO Rainey shrugged his shoulders. It was Carlsen’s risk. It was no child’s play in that weather to steer properly. The Kar- luk, with her narrow beam, was lithe and active as a great cat in those waves. It took not only strength, but watchfulness and experience to hold the course in the wel- ter of cross-seas. Lund, whose recognition of voices was perfect, moved amidships as soon as Carlsen and Peggy Simms came aft. There was no attempt at disguising the fact that the schooner’s afterward was a divided company and, save fer the fact: of his blindness tem- pering the action, the manner of Lund’s showing them his back and deliberately walking off would have been a deliberate in- sult. Not to the girl, Rainey thought. At first he had considered Ltnd’s character as com- paratively simple—and brutal—but he had qualified this without seeming consciousness, and he felt that Lund would never deliber- ately insult a woman—any sort of a woman. He was beginning to feel something more: . than an admiration for Lund’s strength, a liking for the man himself had, almost against his will, begun to assert itself. They stood together by the weather-rail. It was still Rainey’s deck-watch, and at any montent Carlsen might relinquish the wheel back to him as soon as the girl got tired. Suddenly shouts sounded from forward, a medley of them, indistinct against the quar- tering wind. Sandy, the roustabout, came dashing aft along the sloping deck, catch- ing clumsily at rail and rope to steady him- self, flushed with excitement, almost hys- terical with his news. ‘‘ A bowhead, sir!’’ he cried when he saw Rainey. “ And killers after him! Blowin’ dead ahead!” Beyond the bows Rainey could see noth- ing of the whale, that must have sounded in fear of the killers, but he saw half a dozen scythelike, black fins cutting the water in streaks of foam, all abreast, their high dor- sals waving, wolves of the sea, hunting for the gray bowhead whale to force its mouth open to feast on the delicacy of its living tongue. So Lund told him in swift sen- HIS MATE. 339 tences while they waited for the whale to broach. ‘““ Ha’f the time the bowheads won’t even try an’ git away,” said Lund. “ Lie atop, belly up, plain jellied with fear while the killers help ’emselves. Ha’f the bowheads you git have got chunks bitten out of their tongues. If they’re nigh shore when the killers show up the whales ’ll ‘slide way out over the rocks an’ strand ’emselves.”’ Rainey glanced aft. Sandy had carried his warning to Carlsen and the girl, and now was craning over the lee rail, knee-deep in the wash, trying to see something of the combat. Peggy Simms’s lithe figure was leaning to one side as she, too, gazed ahead, though she still paid attention to her steer- ing and held the schooner well up, her face bright with excitement, wet with flying brine, wisps of yellow hair streaming free in the wind from beneath the close grip of her woolen tam-o’-shanter bonnet of scar- let. Carlsen was pointing out the racing fins of the killers. ‘“‘ Bl-o-ows!” started the deep voice of a lookout, from where sailors and hunters had grouped in the bows to witness this gladia- torial combat between sea monsters, staged fittingly in a sea that was running wild. Rainey strained his gaze to catch the steamy spiracle* and the outthrust of the head. ‘“ Bl-o-ows!” The deep voice almost leaped an octave in a sudden shrill of ap- prehension. Other voices mingled with his in a clamor of dismay. “Look out! Oh, look out! Dead ahead!” The enormous bulk of the whale had ap- peared, not to spout, but to lie belly up, rocking on the surface with fins outspread, paralyzed with terror, directly in the course of the Karluk, while toward it, intent only on their blood lust, leaped the killers, thrusting at its head as the schooner surged down. In that tremendous sea the impact would be certain to mean the staving in of something forward, perhaps the springing of a butt. ‘“ Hard a lee!” yelled Rainey. ‘ Up with her! Up!” It was desire to vent his own feelings, * Blowhole or nostril. Go OoNOOLK (C@