Adventure Magazine Cover — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

TP aise LA tgetig oD 5 ‘ ; ee EE mage Oe Oy ee 40 “Billy,” he said quietly and shakily, “Billy, lad, ’t ain’t for us to judge the boy. I told you he was doiug right well, didn’t I, Billy?” Thereafter the ship plowed her stately way to Table Bay, down on the Great Circle past the Crozets and Kerguelen, and along the blustering, long-sweeping “Forties” toward Australia, without the skipper’s ever once returning to the subject of his family affairs. About the forty-seventh day out we be- gan to haul up for the land, aiming to make landfall about Kangaroo Island, and our radio man started picking up scraps of news from ships and shore-stations. It was all amazingly new to the skipper and me, whose windjammer days had been spent without the luxuries of wireless or electric light even; and each item of news that came to hand from those unseen sources away over the sky-line found in us am eager audience which must have been amusing to the second and third mates, both steamer men from boyhood. “Dark horse possible United States President,’ ’’ read the old man from a sheaf _ of radio forms. I peeped over his shoulder as he went through them. “Great fires in Gippsland’ ”—then, as a passenger knocked on the chartroom door to ask him for a mo- ment of his time, Captain Basil crammed the last radio form into my fist and growled - out: “There! Read that—confound their dinner-parties and cruises! Why can’t a man be left to carry his ship to port with- out interference?” “That” turned out to be a message from the colonial representative of the firm say- ing that they were coming to meet the steamer—a party of twelve—at Adelaide, and would go around to Melbourne in her. - Captain Basil was instructed to order his steward to prepare in a manner worthy of the great occasion. An off-lying pilot picked us up soon afterward, and apparently had been so con- fident of getting the new ship that he had brought us some letters. My own corre- spondence was negligible; but the old man got a letter which seemed ‘to banish the grumpiness he had assumed on learning of the forthcoming joy-cruise. As he almost invariably had done since losing his life- partner, he came over to me with his news. “T said so, Billy, d’ye remember? Listen Adventure to this. It’s from an old shipmate o’ mine; he’s kept an eye on Dick for me.” He read from the letter: ““The lad seems to have come back to, himself, old friend. The girl he married has turned out trumps, and he never made a better investment than buying hera plain gold ring. There’s a papoose, too, a young rip with limbs like stanchions and lungs like Boréas. Dick’s got command of a . steamer, too; she’s the Flamingo, an apple- _ bottomed, flake-plated old ballyhoo plying the coast; not such a much, says you, but he'll get a better one if he sticks by the long- necked bird until her engines tumble through her double-bottoms, which won’t be long, “Pm sending this out by Tranter, the pilot. He’s sure to get your steamer. Look out for the boy as you come up. You'll know his ship, for her red funnel’s long and thin and uncertain, just like a flamingo’s neck.” I could see that the letter had brightened up the old man a lot. The news of Dick pleased me more than a little, too, for after all, he had long been a shipmate of mine; but any news of him or his fortune, since he had made that one bad break, was im- portant only in so far as it rendered his dad less melancholy or sad. So my own vision was the keener as I peered ahead for the land, because of the possibility of de- tecting the wisp of smoke from a lean, un- stable funnel, which should gladden the heart of old Captain Basil when he saw it. But no decrepit Flamingo hove in sight. At the Semaphore our directors came on board earlier than we expected them and jomed in the farewell feed in the saloon along with the passengers. Of the dozen, nine were the sort a sailor likes well to serve: well-groomed, prosperous-looking, ‘keen though kindly of eye, and using speech that carried conviction without any bark- ing or blustering. Two of the others were not so agreeable at first sight; but that may have been due to the fact that they could be heard criti- cizing things while they were actually drink- ing the old man’s cocktails in his own room. But the last of the dozen properly soured the good impression made by the first nine, for he was-a rat-faced, mean-appearing little‘man with a cro’jack eye and nervous fmgers, which were ever tweaking at his long nose as if for want of another man’s iCOMIECDOOKS co 2 - _ cols