Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 183: what you’re looking at

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

h/ C.3.Cateliffe cliffe to Captain James Buckden. “ After a lot of thought it has come to this: I must ask you to cancel our engagement. Don’t run away with the idea that I’m going to marry somebody else, because I most emphatically am not. But, frankly, I have met another man that I like better than anybody else in all the world. From a marrying point of view he is perfectly impossible. But I couldn't marry any one else. “You haven’t seen me now for a year, and I haven’t heard from you. You’re a dear good fellow, Jim, and I hope you have already found, or at all events will soon find, some girl who will make you a far better wife than Mary Arncliffe.” The letter was undated, and I personally never made out exactly when it was writ- ten, though I have a shrewd notion that the stationery was that provided for the Brazil- lan navy. ; There was obviously es DE Jim,” wrote Miss Mary Arn- no means of posting it on the Jao Geraes, because the cruiser, when Mary joined her, had just coaled, and was off on a lengthy patrol. So one pre- HE. first of the series of stories Acteiling the adventures of ** Teach: Pirate De Luxe,”” was printed in the All-Story Weekly, issue of May 22. One has been printed ¢ach week since then, and this is the last of the series. 4 XV—THE RECKONING sumes she wrote for the easing of her con- science—in case. From a European point of view the Jao Geraes was not a comfortable ship. To begin with she was vastly dirty and carried on her an abominable smell. She swarmed with rats. She crawled with ‘cockroaches. She even carried to sea with her specimens of the Bahia mosquito. Her crew were mostly dark-skinned, except those that were of an unblushing black, and any piece of her ancient machinery or armament that would spoil or corrode had been allowed to do so throughout many leisurely com- missions. ; Her commander, that elegant brun, Cap- tain Jacob Smith, never appeared on deck till the world was well aired, and always retired below when the evening chill threat- ened. Like the sun-dial he counted only the sunny hours, and even from these de- ducted a hundred and: eighty minutes siesta. He felt it due to his position as captain to spend at least three good hours on this mid day nap. He remembered complacent- ly the barbarous times when, as a junior 749 Arininal fro mM J 4 i G Vil i S (C(O) nn GO)(EA) (SG 0)(0)©) — rN LN