Argosy, Vol. 85, No. 3 — page 125: what you’re looking at

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

“IT WAS WAR.” None but a wonder, I was forced to admit by the end of the fourth day, could have kept me from a proposal of spon- taneous combustion, not to say explosion. I knew I wasn’t keeping that proposal down. It was just some look in her face or quick twist in her ready wit which al- ways saved me and made me choke back the earnest love talk with a feeling that I’d have to do it or give up the happiness of any talk at all with her. There were moments when it looked to me as if she knew she was the life and animation of this sordid, wretched coal- dump, the only influence that was saving the station from being emptied of men by a series of murders and suicides. Then I guessed that she also perceived that she was losing her punch for her job; that she must find some diversion or start the train of self-slaughter herself. I recalled that she had snapped up Rudy unmercifully over some trifle the first morning they had come aboard. It looked to me as if she recalled similar in- stances and decided that, if she couldn’t get on with her own brother any more, she wouldn’t be able to help the others much longer—that it was time for her to get some diversion. At such moments I was dead sure she would have much preferred that I had been a girl; but was doing her desperate best for herself and the others with what I was. — But I was so completely, fatuously in love with her that I was ready to stand for it. I was her slave for life. I’m not sure I’d have been able to keep away from her, had she entertained the bar- racks with nightly imitations of my con- verse of the day. In the darkest of these dark moments of belief that she was mak- ing a toy of me, I was still ready to de- clare myself a dividend of happiness in the thought that to-morrow would be an- other day like to-day. Joy-prison—I don’t think I'll ever be so happy again in this world. I’m not sure that I’d willingly realize again that I was utterly, foolishly made with the sort -A67 of insane love that doesn’t care how fool- ishly insane it is. But it was happiness while it lasted— it was happiness for a week. And then— If you can imagine Dr. Jekyll deliver- ing a nice little lecture to his church’s Dorcas society, and suddenly breaking off to regale them with one of Mr. Hyde’s most richly vulgar tales, you can form some notion of the way the joy went out of things aboard our yacht and that island. It was noon — dinner hour — and we were lunching the raider’s officers in re- turn for the second feast in which we helped them celebrate the capture of two or more well-provisioned ships. We were all roaring at a story of the captain’s when the wireless operator of the island station stepped up to Lieutenant von Hil- berstein, saluted, and handed over a mes- sage. Von Hilberstein read it with a smile of satisfaction growing broader with each word. It was as if only the presence of his superior prevented him from turning loose a whoop of joy. He handed it to the gray-haired cap- tain. The captain read it—read it again as if it were too good to believe. And he did not try to prevent himself from shout- ing a bull-throated ‘“‘ Hurrah!” The clamor for more definite informa- tion was. instant. Even as I voiced my own eager “ What is it, Herr Captain?” I felt a wave of hope that at last the kai- ser’s definite peace-terms had been pub- lished. “Tt is,” cried the captain—and there was instant silence at the resonance of his voice—“ it is that at last our real foe is to be reached. It is that our last and sure weapon is to be wielded. It is that England is to get a taste of that empti- ness she has inflicted on our helpless wo- men and children. It is that the soft pal- avering is over about rules that England has been permitted to change at her own sweet will. ““ It is the answer to our enemies’ scorn for our benevolent offers of peace. It is comicloool C©