Argosy, Vol. 123, No. 2 — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

226 Pliny tested twenty of the bravest Roman gladiators and found that, although warned of what was coming, all but two, when menaced with a naked sword, winked. Dar- win thought that fear was an important element in preserving the life of animals, but what could he say to that paralyzing terror which suspends all movement and makes the bird an easy prey to the serpent, or the killing of seals such an easy slaugh- ter that it sickens even the most pares hunters? The average man recoils at the sight of a garter snake, but he can look unmoved at a test tube full of the deadliest germs. The born football player rarely makes a good man on the track for the reason that he has not the courage for the last grueling fifteen yards, and the track man rarely makes a good football player because he has not the courage for the shock of line buck- ing. 7 Many soldiers who could stand the ter- ror of a trench raid were deadly afraid of rats. of fire and heights; had rather live on the third floor of a tinder-built fire-trap than on the fifteenth floor of a modern fireproofed building. Somewhere in each of us there is a cell stocked perhaps with memories of our own childhood or the childhood of *the race— a loose nerve end which, when properly stimulated, leads to panic. This is not an essay on fear; it is the story of how fear came to Jack Houston, and to sharpen the point of the narrative it must be proved that he was a brave man. It takes courage to revolt against author- ity in the British Merchant Marine, for those in authority are usually physically capable of defending themselves, and, in addition, the trade service is so closely al- lied with the navy that the tradition of unquestioning discipline is almost as strong in one as in the other. Although he was a small man, weighing perhaps one hundred and forty-five pounds in his sea clothes, Jack Houston had assaulted a mate who, in Houston’s opinion, was mistreating Black Adam, a negro who had attached himself to Houston as a pilot fish attaches itself to a whale. Women are constitutionally afraid the average woman the police officer. THE ARGOSY. The mate, like most of his kind, was good in a rough-and-tumble, was armed, and weighed at least one hundred and eighty hard pounds. Force of numbers overcame Houston, and when the steamer Ulalume dropped her anchor a hundred miles up the Iriwadi, he and Black Adam went over the side under’ escort to face the charge of mutiny on the high seas. Houston stuck his thumb in the mate’s eye, whooped to Black Adam, dropped into the oily water, and struck out for shore with the bullets from the mate’s pistol drop- ping about him and about the negro who followed him. . And now. the mate had come ashore, routed out a limp European who passed as police officer, and with a trio of natives who fingered their muskets nervously, searched the village of Dasson for the two. He combed the half hundred houses thor- oughly, and limped finally to the dak bunga- low which stands on the edge of the settle- ment with its back to the jungle. Entering, the two men found Tony Dagon, the owner of this rustic hotel, clad in cotton pajamas and a flowered waist- coat, sitting before a table on which lay open a spelling primer. ‘You speak the lingo,” said the mate to ‘“ Ask him if he has seen two men—one white and one black?” ‘“‘ Pardon, sirs,” lisped Tony Dagon, thumbing the leaves of his book, “I speak —TI speak your lovely English. Anne has a dawg, Anne has a dawl. Anne loves her dawg, Anne loves her dawl.” He pointed with some pride to the picture of Anne— a little girl in pantalettes, with her hair under a circle comb, a doll on her arm, oi a terrier at her heels, “To hell with Anne!” grunted the beefy mate, who wore a patch over one eye. “Education is the ruination of these black beggars. Ask him to tell you straight out if he has seen these two.” The limp police officer, whose mustache dripped wax in the heat, spoke to Tony Dagon in Burmese, and the latter, after an inward struggle in which he fingered the spelling book from one end to the other to find words, answered in the same language. “Yes,” said Tony Dagon, ‘‘ two such COMICLO© S C@