Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 3, 1924 — page 79: what you’re looking at

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

THE ROARING FORTIES, for something and then stop, or turn around. No, I’m no fool when it comes to reading signs, I’m married, and Liz ain‘t, and I knows how things is- going. So you remember what I tells you before you fellows is back from China, your young boss will be spliced up to that there Mary Williston, and the pair of ’em will be living in the new home that Nat is now building on the North Foreland.” The reading of Mag’s letter had been to Dunbar like the knell of doom. Bursting out of the stuffy cabin, where suddenly the air was suffocating, he came into the en- chanted moonlight. Such a night upon the Mersey, with the balm of spring upon the air, could conjure up one picture only. In a twinkling he was back again at Newburyport in bliss. At one moment, with Mary he was on the heights, then he was plunged again into the deep abyss. As Richard Dunbar paced the deck of the Valkyrie that night, all desire seemed to fail, while even the incomparable clipper in his eyes appeared to grow base and vile. What had that ship meant to him? Noth- ing but disappointment and disgrace. Mary had spoken of the clipper’s bad luck—she had certainly spelled bad luck for him. He had gone out on the Valkyrie with highest hopes, only to be broken and reduced be- neath a bluenose plug ugly. To be bullied and harried by Pugsley was trying enough. But now ashore, the grasp- ing hand of Gertridge was ever apparent behind his matchless clipper. This constant reminder of the odious owner was execra- ble to Richard. No Loss and Great Gain Gertridge could not possess a work of art without profaning it. Despite the record which Donald Mac- Kay’s crack had established, the Gertridges in their passion for foreign aid had given orders to their English agents that Mac- Kay’s model should be examined by Eng- lish experts with the view to further im- provements. Captain Forbes argued against this order in vain. ‘‘When misers buy a beauty what else could they do but ruin her?” was his hope- less remark as he finally left the ship and went off to London in despair; while the stolid, unimaginative English designer start- 869 ed tampering with the clipper’s matchless bow. Strange as it might seem, the “ wood butchers of Liverpool,” as Donald MacKay afterward called them, were allowed to fill in the Valkyrie’s bow with slabs of oak sheathing. This work of the wood butchers had caused Richard Dunbar his first real mis- giving. No matter what misfortunes might have fallen upon him his faith remained. But when the Gertridge hand appeared be- hind the clipper, which he loved as much as life, there came to him a rush of doubts and fears. It was for Richard as though heathen hands were being laid upon his goddess—as though they were stripping from her her halo of enchantment. With a sudden surge of disgust Richard exclaimed: “ The Gertridge pigs own this clipper, and all aboard her, body and soul. What’s the use of standing by?” In answer to this rush of doubts there came to Richard a vision of the Valkyrie outriding the gales, a queen in all the ma- jesty of action. Having lived such glorious crowded hours with this queen his soul cried out for more. Then there came that other picture of that divine night at Newburyport, and be- hind all, and beyond all, the beckoning eyes of Mary Williston calling to him, luring him over the darkness, and over the seas. It had come to a clash between the girl and the ship. At one moment the Valkyrie spoke. to Richard Dunbar with a voice that bade him be faithful unto death. Then that spell was broken by the Gertridge memory, and Richard found himself exclaiming: ‘Why should I stick by such as that?” Divided betweer. the ship and the girl he paced up and down, up and down, fighting his grim battle through. The reading of Pugsley’s letter and the sudden picture of Nat Gertridge, Jr., and his aggressiveness at home, had awakened in the heart of Richard Dunbar a veritable tornado of conflicting passion. “If I stick by the ship it will not be for Valkyrie, it will be for Gertridge. Shall I be fool enough to go out, to throw my life away for him, and for his ships, while he stays behind to steal the girl I love?” comniiclsoo! S (CO) nn