Argosy All-Story Weekly, January 13, 1923 — page 175: what you’re looking at

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

JOSH STEBBINS, TREASURE HUNTER. ‘Over the balmy seas where my brave an- cestors immortalized their names.’ ““ Before I signed on he asked me ef i could pilot him in the West Indies an’ the Caribbean Sea, an’ I told him I knowed every rock, reef, an’ island between Floridy an’ Santo Domingo. “ We squared away fer the Bahamas fust, cruisin’ round by Big an’ Little Abaco an’ Hole-in-the-Wall, then we run down by San Salvador an’ Eluthera islands in water so shaller thet we could see bottom most 0’ the time while we was outa sight o’ land. It looked ez ef we might strike a reef an’ carry away our false keel ’most any minit, an’ we did scrape the coral more’n once. It was risky sailin-—Ill say so—but we only scraped off some o’ the barnacles so thet she sailed better instead o’ worse, an’ nothin’ happened, nor begun ter happen, till we was steerin’ so’th fer Hispaniola an’ the Spanish Main, where they always was an’ always will be some hell raisin’ goin’ on. “Me an’ the commodore—I always called him commodore—got purty chummy arter cruisin’ a few weeks. He called me Cap’n Stebbins, ’cept when he hed about eight slugs of old Bourbon under hatches, then he called me Josh jest like you all do. ““ At seven bells one evenin’, ez we was in the cabin drinkin’ whisky soda an’ play- in’ poker at a dollar a chip, while we was makin’ about twelve knots with the wind a leetle abaft the quarter, all of a sudden she hit something with a bang thet stood me: on my head jest ez I was rakin’ down a hundred-dollar pot thet I’d won on a full, jacks up, ag’in’ two pair kings up an’ a lone ace. “T left the money on the floor an’ flew up the companionway with the commodore at my shirt tail, which was. flyin’ straight out behind me. ““* Hey, Josh!’ he hollered. ‘ What in hell hev we hit? Didn’t you claim to. know every rock in the West Indies?’ “¢ Commodore Algernon Pew Kidd,’ I sez, very impressive like, ‘I sure did; an’ I never told a lie in all my life, ez is well known ter them thet hez been acquainted. with me longer’n our brief acquaintance: hez lasted. We ain’t hit no rock, fer.we’re ~ 637 off soundin’s; Rocks don’t drift off their moorin’s.. What we hit was a derelict, or a whale, or mebbe the sea sarpent thet they say lives down here somewhere. Heave the lead!’ I yelled at the forward lookout; ‘ ye. lubberly, cross-eyed son of a sea cook!’ He. run out a hundred fathoms an’ reported no bottom. . “« Jest ez. he called out, somethin’ broke . water on our stabbard beam thet looked like: a small submarine, only it was alive. an’ makin’ the water fly as it sloshed round like a dyin’ wild duck givin’ its last kicks. It swum round an’ round in a circle, rollin’ over now an’ then, so we could see it had a shell somethin’ like them armidillers they is down in Texas, an’ there was a big hole in it amidships with the blood streamin’ out, makin’ its wake red with gory foam. It was about thirty foot long by twelve beam, with a neck like an African giraffe fer length, but covered with scales like an alligator an’ topped off with a head. like a snappin’ turtle, only a heap bigger.” “Josh,” said the schoolmaster, who was an interested listener, ‘‘ that answers to the description of a fossil reptile, the ‘ plesiosau- rus,’ that has been extinct for more than a hundred thousand years.” “-Mebbe it was a plezysorus, or a whim- bampus, but ef he’d been dead so long, he was the liveliest corpse I ever run foul of, fer it was roarin’ an’ bellerin’ till it could be heerd ten miles away.” “T see,” interrupted Pat McGoogle, “that there’s a lake in South América where scientists think that this reptile still exists; maybe that this was one that in a freshet had been carried out to sea and was trying to find its way back to the lake when your yacht struck it?” ‘“‘ Like enough, Pat—like enough; but they’ wasn’t a single nacherlist nor bughunt- er in the hull crew. We didn’t give a damn what it was ez long ez it didn’t board us. All our scientific interest hed gone blooey. “Fer the luyva Mike, commodore,’ I sez, ‘git a gun! There’s the rock we hit, or [ ain’t nothin’ but a pierhead jumper!’ A few rifle shots in its head: an’ neck putvit outa business, an’ it sunk.. ‘We tried the bilge pump an’ found she was makin’ water so fast thet it was plain COPNICLOO KS te com