The Argosy, Vol. XXV, No. 3 — page 53: what you’re looking at

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

THE MYSTERIOUS SHIP. 437 cruiser they were wild to capture the mysterious ship before she sank, on the stricken craft the seamen were taking to the boats to save themselves from imminent death. For only a moment did the little game fighter struggle as if trying to rally even in the death throes, then she pitched forward and went down like a sounding lead. ‘“'They have murdered her !’’ cried Marks in the agony of his heart. It is the end of ends, Millie. We are lost—everything, everything ! ”’ Millie half fell beside her ‘husband on the slime mantled rocks, clasping her comforting arms about his neck, whispering something which broke with asob. The calamity seemed too great for utterance. Suddenly the stricken man rose and turned his face from the sea whither he no longer had the courage tolook, plodding on back toward their little ambush. ‘‘ Well, Millie,’’ he said with a despairing sigh, ‘‘ Heaven has still left to us a little of the treasure—somewhat of the reward for courage and strength in adversity. Come; let us go back and guard it, lest these monsters in os flesh, having seuhed us of the greater wealth, now despoil us of the lesser.’ Arm in arm, Millie clinging to her husband without speaking, the pair made their way back into the thick undergrowth. Suddenly there was heard a low alarm, like one on guard giving a signal to his allies in hiding there, and the heart of John Marks gave a leap. He understood it all on the instant. Snatching two revolvers from his belt, he started on a quick pace toward the buried treasure, resolved to fire mercilessly upon the first stir of a living form, to shoot to kill now in order to protect this last floating spar of a sinking fortune. There was a scurrying of feet, then an open fusillade of bullets, rapid, fierce, and deadly. Millie, overwhelmed with terror, dropped to the ground like stone. The firing lasted some moments, Mark advancing and emptying one weapon after another till he stood beside the uncovered but still safe treasure, steadying himself triumphantly there, weak from loss of blood from a bullet wound in the shoulder. With limbs all but turned to chalk, Millie made her terrified way forward through the thick gloom. ‘‘ Jack, Jack !’’ she called, as if she expected to hear no answer to her appeal save a death rattle. ‘‘ Jack, are you hurt?” ‘“ Fear nothing,’’ came the confident encouragement. ‘“It is all over, and we have saved our own, thank Heaven !”’ Millie came forward, seizing her husband in her frenzy of joy. ‘“ Look !’’ said Marks, ‘“ Where ?’’ ~ Yonder !’’ The man was pointing to a strange coil of inanimate shape- lessness sprawled at full length face downward in the sand. ‘' What is it?’’ she queried with a gasp. ‘It is ‘the little man in black ’—the hound your father set upon me, and who then turned traitor to him at the last. Heis dead. And yonder, mor- tally wounded, if I may judge, for my aim is sure COPmiclaool< (S@)