Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 30: what you’re looking at

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

28 frown and his lips were drawn tight with determination. After ten minutes of rapid walking, he climbed the bluff of a jutting point and peered through the thick undergrowth on the southern slope. Only a few hundred yards away glowed the camp-fire. It was no longer flickering as it had been when he first saw it. Logs had been thrown on and it was blazing away merrily, with shadowy figures passing back and forth before it. He crept down again to the shore and rounded the point, keeping under the cover of the bushes that edged the sand. Foot by foot, he wormed his way in, mounted a knoll not fifty feet from the fire and there, dropping flat to the ground, snaked up al- most by inches until he was on the knoll’s crest, looking down upon the men about the blaze. There were two tents set up among the trees. His practised eye told him that the camp had been made by men experienced in such things, for the shelters had been pitched with a good eye to drainage and the fire had been made with backlogs, for au- tomatic renewing during the night. There were two men moving about in the light of the flames as the aviator settled himself for his lonely vigil. One of them moved away, disappearing in the shadows and Fenton heard his footsteps go crunch- ing down the sand of the beach to where he knew the boat had landed. The other man paced up and down, stopping at almost every turn to yawn and stretch himself sleepily as though he had been forced by the coming of the boat to rouse himself from a sound slumber. The crunching on the sand sounded again, and the dim shadow of the first man came looming up out of the blackness, developing its details of legs, arms and body as it near- ed the fire. Once more, the sleepy man stretched and yawned, this time so loudly that there was no danger of his not being heard. The man who had been to the beach looked up quickly and then laughed, with a note of amused good-nature that surprised Ward. “For Heaven’s sake, Matt,” he said, ‘‘if you're that sleepy, turn in again. I’ll take care of things.” ‘Your very kind invitation is hereby ac- cepted,” Matt replied, and without more adieu he bolted into the far tent and the falling flap hid him from view. Adventure The man who remained drew a pipe from his pocket, filled and lighted it with deliber- ation and, hauling a log up close to the flames, sat down with his back to Fenton. But Fenton had already thrilled with the big measure of success he had won. “Matt” was the name of the man who so needed sleep. ‘Matt’ was the name of the man who had been ordered to gag Phil Conway during the fight on the beach earlier in the evening. Ward’s desire to get a good look at the face of the man at the fire was almost irre- sistible. If the man, Matt, had so quietly and naturally taken his orders from this lone watcher, it was reasonable to suppose that the watcher himself was in command of the camp, and the inference followed that he was Carter. And Carter was the pivot about whom all of this puzzling mystery had come to revolve. With every nerve tense, Fenton began squirming backward, away from the under- brush that edged the bluff, and, by the most careful kind of work, managed to re- gain the beach on the other side without a sound. Here he again rose to his feet and skirted the outer side of the bluff, coming once more into view of the camp-fire, but from the other side, nearer to where the speeding boat had run ashore and in a di- rection from which the lone watcher’s face would show in profile at a closer range. But the lapping of the ripples on the shore reminded Ward of the deductions he had made from the expense of the craft these men were using and he determined to verify them if possible. The sand was smooth and firm and clean all along the shore. It was an easy matter to creep noiselessly down until the deep shadows hid him completely and then along the line of the white ripples. He edged up almost to the rim of a beam of firelight that came from among the bushes, and then stopped for his inspection. - A little grunt of surprise escaped him as his eyes became accustomed to the half- ~ light. In the place of the one boat he had expected to find, there were two. One of them was moored some ten feet off the shore, with bow and stern lines out and a tarpaulin cover protecting its engine from possible showers. beach, a line from its stem running up the shore to where it was made fast about a log. Both boats were of a type to confirm Eomichoo cS The other was nose-up on the . (E©)