Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 2 — page 172: what you’re looking at

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

$54 But lack of the skirt distinctly improved her swimming speed. From the Littondale’s deck one could see the derelict, but Mary had taken a rough bearing before the mist came down, and by keeping her heels to the steamer’s coun- ter, was able to pick up the loom of the bark before she swam the pirate-ship out of sight. She was by no means lonely in the sea. Bubbly, yellow weed floated in neat gardens on the ice-clear water, and fish swam in it, and came to inspect her. They were un- pleasantly friendly fish, many of them, and of a sturdy size. Mary hoped there were no sharks about, and kept a scared eye roving for dorsal fins. Sea-fow! also planed down out, of the blue above the mist to inspect her, but for the most part swung upward again out of sight. Two big gulls, however, slid into the water and paddled alongside in convoy. Mary disliked their beaks, which were hooked like Admiral Teach’s predatory nose. | It was a ticklish job climbing aboard the water-logged bark when she came to her, as the heavy hulk sucked and gurgled up and down in the sea like a pump-bucket in its pipe. But Mary managed it some- how, though she was half-choked with smother in the process. “ And there,” said she, shaking a wet fist—in the direction where the Littondale was not—‘ I just see myself being married by a grubby, fake priest like that. “Besides, of course, I’m Jim, when the time comes, 1f I do marry anybody at all. And, now then, how am I going to live on this nasty, wet thing be- fore the next ship comes along the steam lane, as they call it, and picks me up?” The bark was probably at her best never a very appetizing vessel, being on the Nor- wegian register, and although the war was over, still stripped of all decencies as a war-time precaution. The thrifty ‘‘ Dutch- man” does not take either his best anchor or his best table-cloth to sea with him if there is a chance of losing them. Moreover, as she was full of water practically to the deck-beams, her after cabin was afloat and uninhabitable. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. going to marry She carried a_ top-gallant. forecastle, which was dry. ‘Mary sampled this. She had never been in a Scandinaviah forecas- tle before, and there and then took a vow she never would enter one again. - She wag unladylike enough to spit as she came out. She was not an expert at spitting,. but she continued to do her best-at it for some minutes. Ugh! the smell! Also although she was perfectly certain the things that hung and swung to the roll of the ship from the beams above in that forecastle, were merely oilskins, and not suicides, the idea of them was, well, also ugh! There remained as a place of Christian residence the ship’s galley, a rectangular box held down to the deck abaft the foremast by iron straps. The interior was exquisitely filthy; its smell was beyond words; but the seas somehow avoided it, and Mary felt desperately that she must have somewhere to harbor. So she took a firm grip on all her nicer feelings, and invaded it. On the drastic spring-cleaning that fol- lowed I dare give no outline, being merely @ man with a constitutional objection to being disturbed in my natural untidiness. Mary has put on record the fact that words couldenot describe its greasiness, its untidi- ness, and its general grubbiness; and I take her verdict without question. I have looked in at the galleys of Nor- wegian windjammers myself, and seen as little as possible, because I knew J should have to eat their output day in and day out later on. To describe one in full detail would be beyond the effort of a polite pen. Mary threw overboard, she washed, she scrubbed, and finally—with the late cook’s knife-blade—she scraped, and by her faith in herself she removed mountains. A smell remained, which seemed to be concocted in equal parts of alligator, last month’s whale, fulmar petrel, and backwoods Norwegian, with a dash of Chinaman thrown in. This refused eviction. But to the eye, at any rate, the galley seemed clean, and with that Mary rested content. She lit a fire in the stove and toasted herself and her garments in the pious hope that they and she would in time dry. She brewed herself tea, and baked scones, which she lubricated with un- speakable butter out of a yellow can. It iS GON GOO G (CO awa