Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

remained seventeen and a half. Four months and a half. A hundred and twenty-two days, if I succeeded in keeping my senses. If I did not, ic was a hundred and twenty-two minus x. 2 | I could see the x in front of me; a black, threatening thing, big as a parage door. But I defied it. “You won’t get me,” I said. “I’m bound for Bondi and the brick bungalow.” And, whistling “Barnacle Bill” to keep my spirits up, I began to cut lead piping into slugs. “Ought to have brought a rifle? I = . thought, “but never mind; I can do something with these, and a bic of — dynamite and a fuse.” It took me about fifteen minutes to cut up the slugs. When I raised my eyes from the table on which I was working, I saw, through the window of a the cottage, a steamer—a small trading-boat with a black and white funnel. She was out in the roadstead, and she was just preparing to let go anchor. I let off a shout; you should hear a Clare man do it! “X, I’ve got you,” I cried. “Dead as a doornail—stabbed with your own beastly minus!” And I sent the lead pipe flying across the floor. I just had to make a noise. : : In the roadstead, the little steamer was making a terrible row with her roaring anchor-chains, and a whaleboat was rapidly being lowered. Within ten minutes, France and I were shaking hands. “Never went to London at all,” he told me at the top of his voice. “Got the whole lump of expenses right in Sydney, from two or three splendid chaps who were staying at my hotel. Loads of money. Country fellows.” “They would be,” I thought, remembering France’s local reputation. “Brought the machinery up with me: Brought a geologist. Get a start, get a nice report, go down again and float the company.” “Leaving me in charge?” “That’s right.” “It isn't—not by a mile! France,” I said, looking him straight in the eyes, —he had candid, jolly blue eyes, the little beggar, and he had a smile under his toothbrush mustache that would have wiled cash out of a New York customs-oflicer,—‘‘France, I don’t like this affair of yours any too well, and Id prefer to be out of it.” For I knew, now, that the little car and the Sundays in the surf would have to come by some other road. | “Got the wind up?” he asked, cocking his hat on one side of his head, and looking at me impertinently. : : “T don’t know about that,” I said,—and indeed I did not know; it was a puzzling matter,—“but I do know that there isn’t enough payable copper a here to sheet a yacht.” oe “Oh, you're no expert,” he said easily. “Let me introduce Mr. Rattray Smith, our geologist. Mr. Peter Riordan.” “Why not a mining engineer?” I asked curtly, glancing with some dis- RS taste at the academic-looking youth who had followed France out of the boat. “Came too high,” explained France with a charming smile. “Smith knows copper when he sees it.” “I reckon he knows which side his bread is buttered on,” I commented, without troubling to lower my voice over-much. I simply could not stand 20 : oO Cconmichooks, conn