Argosy, Vol. 120, No. 1 — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

‘ THE BUTT OF NEPTUNE’S JEST. ‘““Nothing happened worth mentioning. Only, I was scared. I didn’t fight it out— I quit. I turned the ship over to the owner, who was aboard, and landed at the first port. I never intended to go to sea again. “YT thought I was unforttmate, that everything and everybody was against me. I’d tried to do the wrong thing, and wasn’t fit for anything else. I drifted up the coast _ —and landed over there. And I lived there, as the rest of them live there. ‘“‘ And then I heard you call—I thought it was me—a quitter. And I saw the way you looked at a quitter. And—lI got into the best clothes I had and hunted up your father to ask him for a berth in the fo’c’sle. He was the most courteous skipper I’d ever met. He was kindness itself. He advanced me money and told me to come on out here as his mate.”’ “And then ’’—the girl flashed back at him with a sudden return touch of. the morning’s scorn—‘ you were ready to be- lieve he was a drunkard!” Dan smiled with a ready excuse. He could lie in another’s behalf. ‘Tt was all so near too good to be true that I couldn’t quite believe a man in his sober senses could have taken such a wreck as me the way he did,” he said. She let it go at that. Her father needed a@ mate very badly. She did not fully trust Mr. Edwards, or regard him as sufficiently competent. for the amount of responsibility a mate had to take, with her father in his present condition. Why, then, could she trust a confessed. failure like Dan Corwin? She did not so much as raise the question. Somehow she _ felt that. he would succeed. Nothing ap- peals more to the heart of a woman than the idea that she has helped a man upward. Once given that idea, it is very hard to con- vince her the man isn’t going upward in- definitely. ‘“ I’m sure I sha’n’t ever have to call you a quitter,” she said impulsively. ‘You won’t,” Dan replied, carried away with the look in her eyes. “I'll stick.” “‘ Shake hands on it,” she invited. Suddenly her face crimsoned with the re- alization that the handshake was lasting too long. 5 ARGOSY 65 “I’m keeping you from your work—and Mr. Edwards from his dinner,” she re- minded. Dan was hardly conscious of touching the deck as he went aft to the busy scene around the hatch that was loading. Fifteen minutes before he had been just waiting the chance to leave the ship after proving to Edwards that it was no disappointment in a too impetuous love that sent him away. Now he would never leave it. “Gosh a’mighty!” the second mate ex- claimed at sight of him—“ what kind of eats have they got to-day? Hope they make me feel like you look.” ‘“‘ Hope they make you look like I feel,” Dan laughed back at him. Tt seemed to him things were going more smoothly now. Perhaps that was mere im- agination. Perhaps he did not mind so much the hesitating obedience. Anyhow, the load from the three lighters was nearly all stowed. Plenty of time for getting it in before night, no matter how slowly it was done. . The speeding up was not all in the seem- ing. Dan had caught the feeling for work —and it is very infectious. By half after two the last cask was lowered into the hoid and stowed. The men from the lighters were picking up their cast-off coats and other belongings they had left about. Should he order the hatch set on without battening for the night, or, should he ask - the captain to come and inspect the job now that it seemed there was possibility of getting some expression ‘of will from the man? Dan peered through the after pas- sage toward the captain’s room. The captain was just coming down across the midship’s deck. Edwards walked be- side him, but turned off defore entering the passage. Dan got a sort of unpleasant ‘“hunch ” that the second mate had stopped because he had caught sight of his next. superior through that tunnel-passage, and wished not to seem to have anything to do with what was coming. It required nothing vague enough to call a hunch to see that what was coming would - probably be anything but pleasant. Under the spell of Miss Hope’s anxious voice, he had been almost inclined to doubt the evi- LOOOLK CO