Argosy, Vol. 85, No. 3 — page 136: what you’re looking at

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

478 “Coming? How?” ‘The motor tender. It’s been layin’-in a little creek on the back of the island ever since you two fell ashore off it. Rudy and Willie and Adolf; they’re all coming in it.” Louie and I looked at each other in sur- prise. Then we quit it. We didn’t really care enough whether we took Rudy and Willie and Adolf or not to be surprised about it. Louie had made it a point to maintain a crew of United States citizens that there be no possibility of trouble or delay with any of the foreign war-vessels so generously sprinkled along our coast. Rudy and—and the other two were Ger- mans. An Allies’ cruiser might make de- mands upon us for their surrender as war prisoners. We didn’t care. The engineers below decided that the engines were still ready to turn up their allotted number of revolutions per minute. One of the clutches was being tightened. The leaks were gaining just a trifle on the automatic pumps. But, barring heavy storms, we ought to keep afloat as we were, straight to New York, if we so de- sired. We didn’t. Key West would do us. But we didn’t care where we went or how we got there. And then we had to begin caring all over. .From somewhere behind the island now quite invisible in the dark and half- mist—a long shaft of light stretched it- self toward the west, lifted, described half a circle and dipped to the east, came back, dropped, vanished, flashed hither and yonder, and finally revealed its source in a white point of tense Hght now clear of the island. “The patrol boat,’ Mamie whispered. Then a sudden idea flashed into her brain and whirled her query upon -Louie: “How fast c’n that little tender o’ yourn travel?” ‘About twelve miles an hour,” Louie responded. For an instant—we had turned on such lights as we needed now—she stared at Hartmann as if the thing he announced THE ARGOSY. were too monstrous to believe. Then she arose and swiftly crossed to where she got an unobstructed view of the performances of the patrol’s search-light. _ She dropped into a deck-chair there, so weakly that I was not sure she had not fainted. I set my numbed muscles into motion to follow her and give any aid I could. When I could see her face, her whole figure seemed to have collapsed into a huddle of misery from which only the dark eyes emitted the slightest ray of life. “Tf you’d just turn that light off—it shines in my eyes,” she responded to my offer of help. . With the light turned out, she drew herself into a yet more shriveled and for- lorn heap. She continued to stare fixedly at the ever shifting search-ray. Huddled as she was, she looked cold. I hurried below and returned with a rug, which I adjusted over her shoulders. She made no effort to help or hinder me. But “nevertheless performing the little act of protection warmed my love to the verge of flame. An hour ago I had indeed revived her from a faint; but now I had time to be and to feel tender in what I did. It was a sentiment her tense spirit had given me no previous opportunity to indulge. It was the sentiment every man likes best to indulge toward the woman he loves. I laid my hand over the tiny cold one she rested on the side of her chair while her shoulders and face hunched forward to watch for the beginnings of the next race for life. ‘““He has always the chance that he can come straight while the gunboat is dodging the mines,” I broke . the silence once to suggest. ‘There are plenty of straight courses out from the island for that boat,” she ‘corrected dishearteningly. And the race was more disheartening. The weather had cleared a little—enough so that we could discern the white hull of the little tender the instant the gun-boat’s searchlight located it. The tender was CO DOOK AMUC C©