Adventure Magazine Cover — page 151: what you’re looking at

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

- T CATCHES your eye and arouses your curiosity, does it? Quite so, sir. Yes, there is a tale behind it, and if you’re willing I’ll tell it. But it’s far too hot to ee spin yarns here in this smelly messroom. _ How about going outside? Ah, but here’s a fine place in the eyes under ~ the awning where we can catch the cool breeze and cheat the sun. You take the bit-head, sir, and I’ll up-end this bucket for myself. A cigar? Yes, and thank you. I have a _ pipe that is a good friend, sir, and now I'll rest him and have a cigar. E Now about that thing you saw back there Si - in the messroom. There was once a fellow by ; * the name of Edward Jackson in the crew of this ship. The ship’s company knew him as = “Devil” J ackson. A strange name, yes; but it - seemed to fit, for a devil he was. But I’ll tell _ the story and you be the judge of him yourself. Jt happened something beyond three years ago. This little Yankton we’re on now was the boat, and how long she’s been serving tender eto the fleet I don’t know. A trim little vessel, as you can well see, and a neat home for her full e ~ complement of two officers and fifty-four men. | was wearing two enlistment stripes and a ~ first-class quartermaster’s rating when I shoul- dered my dunnage aboard her at the Norfolk Navy Yard where she was in dry-dock for a scraping. A month after I came aboard the skipper got orders to take on eight court-martial prisoners and haul them up to Portsmouth Naval Prison. They came aboard the morning we sailed, and some of us stood beside the after gangway and watched them come on. As I recall it they “were ironed together two and two, with three marines and a sergeant to guard them’on the way. This Devil Jackson was one of the lot.’ Two months before he had been court-martialed _____ from this very Yankton for some serious offense. and had been laying it out in the bull-pen a aboard the station ship. a ene ee - z « Ay =_* en — <. ova _— “0 — ~,- See ax. See Se a. =, — ~_~_-= ‘ _ = nay abe Oe SS SRS mee — I’d known Devil Jackson before that through having served with him on the old Jowa. Him and his ways I knew well. I was not surprized to see him with the irons on his wrist and prison ahead of him. I often wondered how he escaped prison so long. If ever a man deserved to be put away from his mates he did. A bad man he was. AS They called him incorrigible. He was the sort who’d rather do a man dirt than eat a good meal. It was an insult to any man to call him shipmate. That bad, you see. Steal? He stole for the love of it when he didn’t have any earthly use for what he stole. It was in his blood to steal. He’d get drunk too, when he could jump ship and get ashore long enough to get liquor, which wasn’t often. It was said the truth was never on his lips from one day to another, and a fouler-mouthed man never drew breath. He’d curse God for the sake of blasphemy. He loved a fight too, and provoked them time and again without just cause. Not with his equals. No. Always with the weaklings and youngsters who’d go down under his hard fists like hammer-struck oxen. Brutal as a red savage, understand. Of course he got a good many beatings from men who took up for the weaklings. I myself gave him a go once just for luck. Yet nothing seemed to hurt him. He could stand up under any kind of punishment, and I’ll give him credit that never once did he cry quits when he got the worst of it. He’d get up to be knocked down again and laugh in your face, and nary an inch would he give to any man. Tough as leather. Once, if memory is not amiss, he knifed a man in the back in the-dark. That’s the supposition. Nobody saw him do it, not even the man he knifed; Devil himself. de- nied it. It was taken for granted it was him, because nobody else aboard was dirty enough for the trick. So they called him up before court. I4I COMMICMOOOkKS