Argosy, Vol. 85, No. 3 — page 134: what you’re looking at

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

476 “‘Oh—why—but I had a compass,” the girl exclaimed. ‘ I—it’s there yet,’ she laughed. ‘“‘ Not much of one — but it steered one boat down here.” She turned aside to fish it from her stocking. ‘Ts that the compass you had?” Louie asked, as she showed him an instrument a few sizes larger than a man’s watch. “ I'll give you two thousand dollars for that any day you want to sell.” The captain was restored as quickly as the girl had been. I stood wondering what about a compass could make Louie and the girl so oblivious to our danger as that he should offer twenty times its worth and she should refuse with death playing tag with us. In righting our course we had run a lit- tle close to shore. Instantly another ma- chine-gun began to spew its stream of lead along us. For it had our range. From fore to aft and back again it swept at a height some two feet above the deck level. We first knew what effect it was taking from the sharp rattle on the steel bulwark Louie had put along the sides of the bridge for the naval maneuvers. An instant later there was a series of dull clinks that told of plate-glass cabin being punctured by bullets too swift to break them. Then the deadly stream was leading forward again —toward us. It was fascinatingly horrible, an invis- ible knife that sawed its way toward us. Again the dull snapping of glass, a duller drubbing through mahogany, a straight line of lambent splatter in the water be- yond while the drill of bullets found noth- ing to stop them forward of the cabin in the rear of the spacious deck. Then— A quick stab of fire, as if a white-hot needle had darted through and out of the calf of my left leg, brought a startled yell of pain I hardly felt. “Why the devil didn’t you duck?” snarled Louie. . And I perceived that the others had flattened themselves against the false pilot-house behind the protection of the THE ARGOSY. short steel bulwark, while I had but stood and waited to be shot. — Don’t tell me you can make a soldier over night. It takes. training to know what is dangerous. The captain had some of that training, having managed to be in al- most everything that happened in the Spanish-American war. Mamie had it, because she had been absorbing it from surroundings wholly military. Louie had ducked properly — because the captain had pushed him where he be- longed. “Tm not hurt any,” I answered easily. ‘‘ Just nipped the skin on my leg.” But five minutes later I was taking sur- reptitious swallows from the flask to keep myself upstanding until we were beyond this rain of death. And now we were reaching the mouth —TI had almost said nipple of the harbor. A sharp turn made under the girl’s direc- tion had put a ridge of coal between us and the interior, which evidently had seen us plainly enough to know we were gone, since its firing ceased instantly. ‘“ Here’s where we catch the big fel- lows,” the girl uttered calmly. ‘And dead ahead — it’s straight out, now — is the grandfather of all the mines. I hardly think they’ll waste that on us.” But it flashed upon me that they would be more apt to use everything they had on us than on an attacking vessel. For we were going away—and they believed we would send back an attacking fleet. Yet, in spite of that, it was the cannon for which I was waiting when the explo- sion came. The tremendous cloud of flame was to- tally blinding. The yacht seemed to stop dead, as if it had run into a stone moun- tain. All four of us crashed against the pilot-house. We had bruises that would last us a long while, if all or any of us lasted with the bruises. And the noise of the explosion It was like nothing else I had ever heard. For I had heard all the other noises. Hearing could not compass this. We felt it. It shook every fiber of our bodies with a comicloool C©