The Argosy, April 1916 — page 119: what you’re looking at

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

FOOLS OF tance. She stole up very close to the door of her hut and squatted in the under- growth by the path. The noise of furniture being knocked about and the constant bellowing demand of Michael Sands and the quavering cries of his associates that Mother Juliet reveal herself she listened imperturbably. But her heart sank when she heard the crash of some great weight on the floor and Michael Sands cried victoriously: - “Tn here, boys! She’s barricaded herself in the rear shed!”’ They would find the stranger—the miraculous ally whom she had promised to William Ransom for the morrow! Mother Juliet crooned to herself voice- lessly and waited, impatiently wringing her hands. : More stamping of feet, more clatter of voices, with the big bellow of Michael Sands booming above the others. Then silence. For five minutes the seeress tested this silence before she hazarded entrance into the hut. She scrutinized every corner and poked it with her sun-umbrella. Into the timber she advanced and went through the like procedure, always finding her way about in the darkness with the natural ease of a cat. The stranger, Michael Sands and his men were gone. The stranger’s cot-bed lay upside down on the floor; she discovered no trace of his blankets. CHAPTER, X. LOST—AN EMBEZZLER. [FE grove behind the cliff at the east- erly end of Big Twin Island, instead of enshrining the sanctum of the voodoo seeress, might have served as the site of a Greek temple. Past the upland in a fertile stretch of rolling meadow the green center of the island was piebald with the white cottages of the Settlement, while the whole westerly point rose abruptly and splendidly, for all the world like an acropolis of Na- ture’s cunning architecture. On this acropolis was Captain Neville’s dwelling-estate and his low, sturdy half- timber house of Elizabethan style, the ground-plan of which compared with a capital E save for the omission of the mid- dle bar of the letter. Half-Moon House he called it, after the cove and bay which it faced with the setting sun. But the Settle- SACRIFICE. 109 ment people never spoke of it otherwise than as the big house. The general living-room, known as the hall, adjoined the northerly wing, in which were the apartments of Captain Neville, of Michael Sands, his first assistant, and of his chief clerk and all-around man, Oscar’ Molle, a Belgian. Here the social life of the curious house- hold had its focus. Here were the billiard- table, the reading-table, covered with maga- zines, reviews and papers anywhere from six weeks to a year behind in date. Here were a piano, an organ, an odd as- sortment of stringed instruments and even a talking-machine. Here also were great dozy armchairs of wicker and of leather and broad couch-benches along the walls. Tall French windows of leaded panes looked upon the sea to the west, and on the east at the rather unsuccessful attempt to make thrive in this alien clime an Eng- lish court garden. Here, in a word, were all the comforts and even the luxuries out of which the re- tired English sea captain, Horace Remyng- ton Neville, had contrived to make a man- orial home on the desert island of which he had taken possession as a squatter without dispute, and where, until the present reve- lation, he had been monarch of all he sur- veyed without question. The home had been for his wife and daughter Susan. But the wife had sickened and died after two years of residence. Whether the cause was the climate or mere heart-break amid the splendor and majesty of their lonely empire, only two persons had ever really known. One was the captain himself; the other, his dead spouse, who slept under waving palms on the highest point of the estate in a coffin and tomb of stone that the captain had fashioned with his own hands. As the secret of the tomb, so was locked the secret of the captain’s breast. Susan, his daughter, was twelve when her mother died. Each year Captain Neville was firmly resolved to take her and the stone coffin back to England. Each year for seven years he had re- solved to do this—and the longing of the girl for the far journey increased with the mystic awakening of.her mind into woman- hood, while the chains of the island do- minion and of the tragedy of the tomb under the palms wrapped the captain faster in their coils. MICLOOOK ©