The Black Mask — page 124: what you’re looking at

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

ae Brothers-of-the-Coast By J. C. Kofoed Mary Rose when she steamed out of Port Royal, and swam back to the wharf. It was a foolish thing to do, for the harbor was full of ground sharks, but the heat and rather too much rum-and-sugar had made me reckless. Probably, too, I had imbibed some of the devil-may-care spirit of this ancient nesting place of the buccaneers. When I reached the dock I was dizzy and blown from my exertions. It was terribly hot. Something seemed drag- ging at the nape of my neck, and the winking lights in Port Royal harbor looked like the blazing eyes of mam- moth animals. J sat down on a cask, and watched the red lantern on the Mary Rose’s stack disappear into the night. I couldn’t quite recall why I had come back to Port Royal. It was be- cause of something someone had told me—damn that rum! My head was like an empty barrel. I could not re- member a thing. After a bit I lit my pipe, having to- bacco and matches safe in a waterproof bag, as all sailormen should. Gradually the fog in my brain started to shred out. I began to remember. First it was Mary Logan. She had promised to marry me back in New Bedford. She had laid her little hands in my great, horny ones, and pressed | DROPPED over the side of the her lips against my cheeks, murmuring’ words of endearment, and promising to wed me in a fortnight. All the time she knew she was lying, for her plans had been laid to run away with Benjy Harrison that very night. Something snapped inside of me then; the world - must atone for.” went black before my eyes. . . . Later I shipped on the Mary Rose, bound for Port Royal. But it wasn’t Mary’s treachery that had made me leave the old tramp. What was it? I pressed my fists against my aching temples, and tried to think. Ah, I had it! It was on account of what Hong Fat _ showed me—that and the sugared rum, I guess. The filthy, slit-eyed China- man was a magician in his own coun- try, he said, and I’ll give it to him that he was clever. For two dollars he went through his whole bag of tricks, but it didn’t satisfy me. I’m a deep water sailor, and I come from a long line of blue-nosed, psalm-singing Puritans, but there’s a streak of the mystic in me, I always wanted to look behind the veil, and Hong Fat said he could lift it for me. : So I gave him five dollars to do it. He brought out a little bronze bowl from under his robe, and made some passes over it with his‘tean, long-nailed fingers. A thick, oily smoke curled up from it and almost hid his emaciated yellow face and beady eyes. Then he asked me in his crooked Shantung dialect if I could understand Chinese. I told him yes, rather sourly, for the smoke was making me drowsy. “Sailor man,” he said in his sing-song way. “You are a brave one—a brave man, but you have done enough wrong to offend the gods; wrongs that you “Wre ngs 7” I said. “T’ve led a pretty - rough Comicbhooks.com ce ey oe Re o oe bt stitial Se en i a,