Argosy, Vol. 85, No. 3 — page 117: what you’re looking at

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

“IT WAS. WAR.” was half hysterical over all that had hap- pened. | It takes quite a girl to look beautiful and half hysterical at the same time. But that girl was doing it perfectly. I per- mitted myself, under protection of Louie’s query, to gain a complete survey of her attractions. | Surely those dainty hands and feet were French or Spanish or something ro- mantic; though the blondness of her hair and skin proclaimed. that she must have come from the northern part of any of the Latin countries, she had dark-brown eyes. I was thinking very fast. If she were only French or even Spanish—it would be all off for Louie. Heaven grant that she be not German. For Louie could get away with whatever dialect his sausage- making father had brought over with him. But Louie was trying her in plain English. ‘Pardon me; but could you possibly tell me what it all means?”’ I fairly ached for a “ jé ne le comprends pas,” -or “ No entiendo io.” But that fairy vision spoke Queen George’s English— she spoke it fluently, not to say gaseous- ly, and in perfect, up-to-the-minute Fifth Avenue style— above a Hundred and Tenth Street. I quote. comment: ‘You bet your gran’ma’s crayon por- trait I can tell you what it’s all about. It’s about a year’s residence on this coal dump for yous; though there ain’t no particular good reason for hopin’ it won’t be six years. If you two tender babes had had the sense between you to take the cue I was tryin’ to hand you, you might ’a’ made a getaway with that pretty little toy ship of yourn. But now—you might just as well let me pinch the bunch of yez, in- stead of waitin’ for the guard to wake up and poke you around the beach with a bayonet. able, please, and the baron will listen to any other particular questions that’s on yer minds.” We started, peaceable and quiet. She turned to Tom Healy and Billy Nock. I cannot bear even yet to path at its base. You c’n come quiet and peace-. 459 “Yous c’n come along, too,” she in- vited. And they came, too. It wasn’t much over half a mile to the end of the coal-heap, along a well-beaten Then we turned along the inner side of what now showed itself to be almost a ring, with a snug little har- bor in the middle. Louie had told me he was going into the harbor, if the island proved worth looking over. We were going into it all right. And here were buildings — long, low shacks of the most temporary construc- tion, also some of the heavy concrete walls that are known as the protectors of ord- nance by any one who has ever been to Fort Wadsworth. Warped to a dock in the middle of this little harbor lay a long, black ship, which just about filled the ca- pacity of the place. It certainly would have been squeezing to put two such ships in there at once. Louie gave me one gasping look. I handed it back to him. We Both knew. We had stumbled upon the hidden coal- ing station of that mysterious raider that had been making the newspapers interest- ing when we had last seen any we could read at Porto Rico. And that grim mon- ster into which, just then, men were car- rying, almost at a run, huge bags of the soft, black coal piled to the height of a small hill all over the island—that was the raider herself. Before we had gone another fifteen feet a young-looking officer ran down the hill to meet us. The girl brought us to a halt. “Here, Rudy, are four of the men off that yacht out there,” she introduced us. “They got off in a little gas-boat before Captain Heiny seen ’em, I reckon. Any- how, they landed down at the other end.” “Gott!” Rudy exclaimed. ‘ And you bring dem guys up here all by yourself already. Say, Mamie, you could take it from me, you'll get one iron cross from der kaiser yet.” Mamie laughed disdainfully. “Not, I reckon, f’r bringin’ up them comicloool C©