Adventure Magazine Cover — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

The Gold Ship had spoken. His right hand gripped the tiller, his left crept down to the curving butt of the pistol in his belt. “So, Michel, you are the first to quit. Yet I think I heard you take oath with the rest of us not to turn back until we had taken our ship.” He laid the pistol on his knees, shifted hands on the tiller and raised the long muzzle until it pointed at the rowers. The bow oarsman shrank aside. “Show us then your ship,” said Michel sullenly. “Show us a ship and [ll fight while there’s life in me. Dead men can not capture prizes, nor starving ones neither.” As if moved by a master cord, all hands strained their eyes round the mastless horizon, then returned to Pierre, carelessly fingering his weapon. “You’d go back to be laughed at— jeered out of every tavern in Tortuga, a byword in all Hispaniola?” he asked them. | “T’d rather be laughed at by men than fought over by sharks,” retorted Michel. “That’s what’ll be the end of us. Look at the brutes. They know they’ll get us soon. I counted twenty-nine at noon. One for each of us.” games THE flying fish had disappeared <4 and the sharks had resumed their eis patrol. One eighteen-foot monster veered toward the boat, its blunt nose close to the surface, its yellow eyes regarding them viciously. It half turned on its back, the dirty white of its belly glazed blue by the watery film, its rows of teeth showing savagely in the triangular maw. One of the men struck at it with an oar and the brute, with hardly a motion of fins or tail, rushed at it, caught the splintering blade and tore the sweep away as the sailor lost his balance and lunged heavily against the gunwale, hauled back by his comrades. “Let shark fight shark,’’ said Pierre. “We'll keep our quarrels. We are all in the same boat and I am its commander. There’s land in sight for cowards. There’s food left for brave men. I thought I had shipped them. You styled yourselves pica- roons and pirates while your bellies were full. Must you always cast sixes to keep heart in the game?” “There are no stakes in sight,”’ grumbled Michel. ‘‘The sap is out of us. Id as lief be in as grilling in this boat.” 61 73 Aye!” shout. ' “ig where you’ll be in short order, Michel,” said Pierre with the muzzle of his pistol slowly lifting, leveling. “You swore to obey me. You gave me the right of life and death over those who refused my orders. I doubt if you have the capacity for prayers,” he went on grimly, “T’ll say one for you.” Disappointment had curled his brain a little. The sun had turned his blood to fire. His finger twitched on the trigger. So far his will had turned aside despotically all suggestion of failure. Now he gave it rest. He was not keen to kill but he sensed this for the sticking point and a somber despair stiffened his purpose. He judged that the first man to weaken in the enterprise would be weak in other ways. The blue flame glowed in the eyes that mercilessly met Michel’s. Michel cowered. “YT but spoke what was in the minds of all of us,” he said from behind the back of a fellow. “Put it to the vote.” Pierre reviewed the chances, reading the haggard faces. There would be but one vote with his, he figured; that of Sanderson. The men, unclean, cramped, half-fed, had lost their stiffening. There were two quarter-rations left. The morning would see them at the end of their resources, barely able to make a landing. He had failed—unless he compromised. He caught a short nod from Sanderson in the bow, as if the chirurgeon read his mind and agreed with his finding. At the The murmur rose almost to a same time, he had loosened his brace of - pistols behind the men’s backs, ready to follow Pierre’s lead. The heart was out of them. To shoot was sheer murder—useless. They were like ashes, all the fire gone, unless he could furnish it with the spark that still burned within him. “There is no need to vote,” he said. “TI do not ask the impossible of any man. Only his utmost. We have enough for one fair-meal, enough to stay your appetites. We'll make it tonight’s supper. We’ll stand as we are until the breeze fails, which it likely will by sunset. Then we’ll drift and paddle westward until dawn. If the sun finds no sail in sight, we'll land at Port-au-Prince or keep on to Jamaica and Port Royal, if the wind favors. “We are in the highway of -Spanish GOMIGHoOO S (© inn