Argosy All-Story Weekly, November 13, 1920 — page 107: what you’re looking at

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

THE MYSTERIOUS QUEST. likelihood of death in an overladen open boat—-than to be carried back to San Fran- cisco now. So I gazed southward at the smoke-line, and I did not move; and she stood beside me in silence. Once I glanced down at her face, and saw the pallor in her cheeks, the lips pressed tightly together, the tears gathering in her eyes. And then there came back to me the knowledge of the duty which I could not shirk. There are some things which are greater than love, and fair dealing with one’s fellow men is one of these. I knew now that, if I were to refrain from lighting that heap of wood, love would itself turn to bitterness. So I struck the match and touched it to the whittled shavings at the base of the pile, and in silence I watched the little flame climb, growing as it ascended until it was roaring among the fagots. The smoke column shot upward, a straight line of dense black, against the cloudless sky. “It is the only way,” I said. She nodded, and in silence she smiled bravely up at me. And then she pointed to the lashed oars with the white cloth; and I raised the signal. We waited, watching the distant vessel’s smoke. And while we bided there, holding our eyes on the oncoming ship as the two masts crept up over the sky-line and the hull slowly revealed itself, it struck.me that she was keeping unusually close to the coast; that she was really off her course. The pos- sibility that she had picked up some news of the departing mutineers occurred to me; that would account for her creeping shore- ward where she could search for further signs of the schooner or ourselves. Now she. had caught our signal. For she was coming straight on, and the sudden blackening of the cloud which poured from her funnels showed that she was putting on speed. We had done all that there was for us to do. “We may as well be heading back for camp,” I said. She sighed, and I a as she turned to go with me, whether she was taking it amiss that I had done the only tA 385 thing there was to do. But when we had gotten about half-way down the slope she answered my unspoken thought. “Pm glad it was you,” she said sim- ply, “for I would not have been brave enough to make that signal.” I did not make any reply to this, for I was thinking that perhaps there was, after all, a chance for us. dred—I knew that, for I knew the ways of coastwise vessels—but the fact remained that sometimes northbound steamers did touch at Ensanada; and if this one would not be making that obscure little port of its own accord, there was still the possibility of inducing her skipper to do so. “You're thinking that perhaps we’ve some hope yet?” she asked me, and the question startled me, hitting as it did the truth. I nodded, and I told her what was in my mind. Her eyes brightened at once and the color came back into her face. “Tl tell my father,” she said, ‘“ and— if we can do that—” She smiled up at me. ‘“ We owe so much to you already,” she ended with a little catching of her breath. As we returned to camp Captain Wilson, Ross, and Larson were on their way to meet us, and walked back the better portion of the distance in our company. For the first time since we had been together, we talked to one another without constraint. The feud was done with—for the time. I will pass by the final ordeal of our waiting; when the steamer showed standing by outside the little bay, until the two boats which put off from her, visible now on a tossing’ crest, vanishing now in the trough of the sea, reached -our gleaming beach. We men ran out in the wash, grasped the gunwales, and dragged them up inshore. The steamship came with news of the mutineers. She had picked up the yawl early in the day, some distance down the coast, bottom side up. Discovery of the tragedy which had overtaken the trio while they were fleeing from the scene of the murder had caused the vessel to change It was one in a hun- . Eomicbooks