Argosy All-Story Weekly, November 13, 1920 — page 100: what you’re looking at

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

a78 I stood my turn at guard, keeping to the seaward dune, which was quite lofty, and gave me a good vantage point from which to look and listen for movemént from the mutineers. I could hear them plainly enough down there on the beach by the two yawls. They were talking quietly among themselves, but were making no at- tempt to conceal their presence there. What they intended would come later, and when I went to my blankets it was with a sense of impending disaster which I could not shake off for the life of me. Anxiety and the tugging pains in that inflamed knife-wound kept me wakeful. I lay there, staring upward at the great yel- low stars, hearing all manner of fanciful sounds, until sleep became impossible. I arose and crept to the summit of the sea- ward dune and found the skipper lying flat. He whispered to me. that there had been no sign of trouble. “Still down there on the beach,” he told me. ‘I can hear ’em every now and then.” As he said it, I caught the sound of their voices where he had indicated. I lay there beside him for a little while and tried to pierce the darkness, but my eyes were not equal to the task. I could barely make out the great heap of the ship’s stores which overshadowed the pile of leaden boxes so completely that the latter were merged with it. Not a minute passed but I fancied I could see some one stealing along. I told Wilson as much. “Aye,” he answered with his lips close to my ear, “ I’ve seen a matter o’ fifty men more or less down there to-night, only to know it wasn’t so. Better ye go back to your blankets. Ye’ll need all the rest ye can get before we’re through.” I took his advice and crawled down into the trough, and in the course of an hour or so I saw Ross go up to the summit of the dune and relieve the skipper on sentry. Some time aiterward I awoke from a trou- bled sleep with a start to feel a hand upon my face. : ‘“Steady.”” It was the captain whisper- ing as I leaped up. “ Ross sneaked down and give me word they’re movin’ toward us.”’ J drew my knife and the two of us went ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, on hands and knees to the crest where the sailor was waiting. Larson was there be- fore us. ‘“They’ve crep’ up clost,” the engineer whispered. ‘‘ Now!” I felt his fingers gripping my arm. They could not have been forty feet away when he gave the warning, and I thought I could distinguish a moving shape close to the sand. A moment later I was sure that there were several of them. There followed an interval during which there was no sound save our own breath- ing and the dull undertone of the slumber- ing surf. Occasionally the slight backwash hissed along the sands. Then something stirred in the dark where the great heap of ship’s stores enshadowed everything. Just a little scraping sound, after which the silence resumed. Later on ‘it was followed by a clump as H some one had dropped a weight on the sands. ‘Stand by for a rush. They’ll be on us In another minute,” the skipper whispered. But he was wrong. They did not come. I saw some signs of movement down on the sands, but the figures which were close to the earth vanished presently; and then we caught several faint noises by the two yawls. _All of this was maddening, and I would have given a great deal had we only been in-a position where no one’s life but his own depended on the outcome. We dared take no such risks and had to bide here. And while we waited the shadows of moving forms approached from the direc- tion of the beach. The little hushed sounds came'again by the heap of ship’s stores; then the vague forms reappeared to’melt into the night down toward the water-line. 7 The truth was beginning to come over me, and I was about to speak my suspi- clons when a new sound smote my eafs. A gurgle of water. It had been growing on my senses slowly for some time. Captain Wilson was creeping down the slope toward the heap of stores by the time he had whispered the command for the rest of us to follow. He was the first to reach the water cask. And as he muttered the oath which the horror of his discovery NiGDOOkKS (EC) im (E@)