Adventure Magazine Cover — page 69: what you’re looking at

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

The Gold Ship the corners of their eyes. He bunched the silk cloth and let it fall. Before its fluttering folds. had fairly touched the sand, Volin sprang back, whirl- ing his cutlas high, bringing it swishing down. with a force that seemed Irresistible, driving to cleave Pierre’s neck where it joined the shoulder. Pierre’s weapon flashed up, red in the sunset as if already blooded. The giant’s blade glided from its well placed angle and he barely parried a lightning lunge that made him step back so that his heel smudged the ring. Bellowing, he flailed a dazzling circle to sweep aside Pierre’s guard. Pale sparks flew from the grating steel as Pierre nimbly side- stepped, well inside the ring, his cutlas always set to swerve aside cut and thrust, sending in snaky lunge after lunge that were barely avoided by the clumsier Volin. He saw the giant’s stomach begin to heave and the sweat break out upon his face. He laughed as he danced away from a swinging blow. “Too much rum and beef, Volin,’”’ he ‘mocked. ‘‘Taut belly, slack body. You are over-blooded. I will relieve you presently —Ah-h!” A streak of blood showed on Volin’s upper arm where Pierre’s point had sliced the flesh. The red stream flowed down to his wrist and*dripped on the sand. Pierre pushed the attack and Volin responded with a furious rally. A straight thrust, caught and carried through in #erce, passed between Pierre’s side and arm. Volin grasped at the steel threatening his throat and roared as Pierre slashed it loose, almost severing the giant’s thumb. Cursing, he leaped awkwardly forward, beside himself with pain and rage, his left arm with its bloody fist bludgeoning at Pierre’s smiling face, his cutlas held edge- wise in front of him. Pierre seemed to shrink before the on- slaught. He dropped to his left knee and sent up his blade, swift and true to the mark—Volin’s hairy armpit. There was a skreek of steel on bone, a gush of blood—and Pierre’s steaming point com- ing out back of the giant’s shoulder, crim- son-tipped. For a moment Volin seemed to hang sus- pended on the weapon, his face convulsed. Then he staggered back, clear of the circle, the hot blood pouring from the wound, and sagged to the beach like a dropped chain. 59 THE boat that Simon provided was little better than a canoe. It barely held the little company of reckless adventurers. There was no chance of com- fort other than shifting their cramped posi- tions. Occasionally three or four would lie down on the shifting bottom-boards or curl up in stern or bow. Oftener they swam about the craft to stretch their limbs. That was before the sharks began to keep them persistent company. First one high fin had appeared and trailed them. Then another showed, until day and night at least a score of the sea tigers formed their escort, the ripples from their fins streaking the blue water from dawn to sunset, showing arrowy lines of phosphorescence after dark. The food that Simon had provided was neither plentiful nor of high quality. The biscuit was moldy and weevil-bored, the meat badly cured and the wine thin. He had been niggardly with the powder. Equipped thus, they had left Tortuga under a fire of comment that was close to jeering. That, in their desperate pride, precluded any return save a triumphant one. There was a mast in the pirogue and a lug- sail. The last was of as doubtful strength as the rigging. They dared not trust it ina stiff breeze. Nor could they sail within ten points of the wind, while the craft made leeway like a crab. The thole-pins were clumsy and the oars ill-matched. The seams needed calking and an hour’s cessa- tion from bailing found the water beginning to slosh about in the bilge. In such sorry, desperate case Pierre steered his inadequate command as they ran down the Windward Channel and out into the Caribbean Sea, looking for a prize in the shape of a rich merchantman that might _ be boarded by a tour-de-force. Volin was in hospital at the house of a woman who favored him. But where, through his own fault, he dropped out, nie more hardy spirits who were hard put to it to secure what they deemed the necessaries for living had volunteered. Besides Pierre and Sanderson, the chirur- geon, there were twenty-seven men, armed only with pistols, cutlases and resolution. The oars were splashing listlessly, the sail filled and flapped as the pirogue laboriously topped each dark-blue hissing roller that reflected from a myriad shifting facets the brassy glare of the mid-afternoon sun. It GOMIIGoOO S (© iin