Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 2 — page 173: what you’re looking at

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

TEACH: PIRATE DE LUXE. was a butter that advertised itself a fort- - night ahead. But Mary felt that the shipwrecked mari- ner nowadays must take gratefully what offers. That universal store, which the Swiss Family Robinson had to fall back upon, is entirely a thing of ancient fiction. She would have taken the wrecked bark philosophically enough—so long as_ the’ weather kept fine—but for one thing, and that was the prese ce of sea-fowl. These gathered to the derelict from the four quar- ters of the heavens, perched on its yards, made unpleasant noises, and littered the decks and rails abominably. A dozen times ' during the first hour of her boarding Mary tried, without effect, to shoo them away. But only those nearest to her fluttered. - The rest were brazen. And the way they stared with glass, beady eyes, was—she felt—rankly impertinent. They had the manners, she felt, of Huns. But even when she called them Huns, they did not budge. They had the thick skin of the Hunnish race. ‘All right,” said Mary, ‘“ Dll strafe you, before I’m through, you unmannerly brutes, in spite of pleasant memories of your lady cousins and their housekeeping on Mary-_ land Cay. For the present I’m busy—cook- ing scones. I wonder if this condensed milk is what a white woman ought to touch?”’ There was a cluttered store-room at the . back of the galley full of boxes and bags, and presently after finishing her scones and tea, Mary’s housekeeping instincts set her to taking stock. Faugh! What weird taskes in food sailors had, especially Nor- wegian sailors. , However, unpleasant though the selec- tion might be, there was plenty here to keep her from starvation for long enough. But some of the stuff was obviously useless to her, and if enough was removed she had an idea of making the store into a bed- room. Well, here was a bag of oatmeal, obvious-. ly furred and mildewed. That certainly could go. And this case of bottles that looked like lime-juice? Ah, they would be useful. She dragged the moldy meal-sack out on deck, and the birds flapped and planed “300 down to it in blue and white clouds. Then she got a corkscrew from the galley, opened one of the bottles, and took a good sip. I ask you to picture Miss Mary Arn- cliffe tackling her first mouthful of that abominable Norwegian spirit, aquavit! When she had finished coughing and choking, she carried the offending bottle. outside, shoved away the birds, and emptied its contents over the oatmeal. She did the same with the remaining eleven bottles of the case. That, she thought, would disgust _ even a seagull, and presently she would te left alone in peace. — But the gulls leaped to the feast, and presently Mary was crying at the discov- ery that she had made a great number of them extremely tipsy. ‘“QOh!” she sobbed. ‘“ How disgusting of me! I had no idea the beastly stuff would act like that! ‘I thought it would merely drive the creatures away. And that old herring-gull there, that’s tipped back on to to his tail, is actually making 2 speech! Wouldn’t Edward laugh if be could see . me! P| (“ Edward, ” who presumably was. Ad- miral Teach, might have laughed. Miss Arncliffe was probably more competent to judge upon that point than] am. But asa fair-minded historian I may poigt out that- the pirate would have been extremely grati- fied if he had known that his ldte captive was thinking of him by anything se inti- mate as a Christian name. She had always held him at more than arm’s-length. She had never shown him a decent civility. And really, for a parate, he had been remarkably forbearing and geierous with her. That at least must be acceded to him.) It was a boat’s crew from the Brazilian cruiser Jao Geraes that waked Mary from her beauty ‘sleep that night. They had boarded the derelict without much nolse—or at any rate, the noise of the sea and the repentant sea-iomt drowned theirs. They invaded the valley, armed exces- sively. They struck matches. Their com- plexions varied from brown-boot color to austere-black. They all of them talked COM € DOOIX COlini