Adventure Magazine Cover — page 36: what you’re looking at

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

26 not remove all his loot until now, when he thought his end was near anyway. This is an order to some Chink to deliver this gold tous. We can’t deliver the order, and if we could, we can’t ship the gold. If we’re in Nanking tomorrow, our lives aren’t worth a dead match. I’ll obey an owner’s orders when they’ve to do with righteousness, but T’ll not spend human lives to help a thief. Make one step toward that door, and you go into irons. There’s been a curse on this trip from the first, when the doctor came aboard and told us what the trip was for. We'll go back without the gold, and it’s the last time I sail under the Green Star flag.” His face was blazing with the light of determination. Suddenly, too, I felt under my feet that indefinable something that comes to a ship when her last tie with the land is broken. A moment later, Fraser clattered up the ladder and reported the ship loose. His face was gray with exhaus- tion. He had been in charge, alone, keeping that cutthroat crew aboard with a shotgun, since O’Day had gone ashore; now his eyes were half-closed, and the hand he rested on the doorpost trembled violently. O’DAY moved toward the door. “T’ll take charge,” he said. ‘You can turn in, Fraser.”’ “One moment,” broke in Doc Parsons. ‘“‘T have something to say about this sailing back empty-handed.” O’Day crossed to him threateningly. “As long as you’re on my ship,” he growled, ‘‘you’ll say what I say about it. Savee? We're sailing back empty because you came on board when you did and told us what we were doing; also because I’m not going to take back my ship loaded with what’d get us all killed on the high seas. That gold can stay in China until judgment- day! That’s all!” “Tisten to me, you fool!’ hissed old Par- sons, leaning across the table, with his eyes glaring above the rims of his glasses. “Do I talk for the pleasure of it?” O’Day stared at him angrily, but there was no doubting, from the tensity of the old man’s attitude, that he had something vital to tell us. ‘“When I came aboard at San Francisco,” he said, in a low, rapid voice, “I came by the orders of Campbell himself. The giving of the packet to young Carter here was a blind. So were the visits to the other officers. So Adventure was the quarrel between Campbell and me —all designed to avert suspicion from me. Carter’s packet contains nothing but blank sheets of paper. The real packet with the order to Mo-fo-Goo to deliver the gold was in my hands!” “You —— ,’ roared O’Day, stepping forward with his arm upraised. *Stop!” cried the doctor. The ship’s siren blared. “Take the bridge, Fraser,”’ snarled O’Day over his shoulder. “‘I’ll relieve you in a few minutes. ‘Tire pilot’s there.” A moment later we felt the first throb of the engines going astern to clear us of the dock. O’Day was gazing at the doctor with a sort of contemptuous pity. “I suppose your daughter was brought along to divert suspicion, too?” he asked. ‘fA nice adventure for a girl like that!” The doctor raised his hands in a frenzy of despair. “Don’t mock me!” he cried. “I’ve been through enough. How do you think I’ve felt when I’ve seen Carter and the rest of you used as dummies to be knifed instead of me? Howdo you think I felt as I shouted out all that news about Campbell in this cabin that night—news the Tong-men aboard already knew—so that they’d be certain [had no hand in the business? I did it because Campbell could send me to jail if I refused and—and—I was afraid. I’m so old! I’m so old!” Suddenly, his hands still in the air, the tears started to his eyes and ran down his wrinkled old cheeks. A moment later, he slumped back on the settee and buried his face in his hands. To see such a hard man broken up was too pitiful. O’Day stepped forward and laid a hand on his shoulder. “The fault’s not yours,” he growled com- fortingly, “it’s that old ——— driver back there in the big house that’s to suffer. And T’ll make him suffer when I get back, by Peter and Paul. But:we didn’t get the cursed gold, and there’s an end of it. Think, man, if we’d got it! Our lives’d be one terror of attack all the way across.” Parsons raised his head as if the words had. stung him. “O God!” he said, rising. I felt a shiver run up my spine. I knew quite certainly what was coming. So, judg- ing by the increase in his pallor, did O’Day. “What?” he demanded. “Speak, man!” COMmicaoo® S (©