Adventure, January 20, 1922 — page 140: what you’re looking at

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

(138 and holster—so it’s pretty certain that the man who fired the shot was either the cor- poral of the guard on watch or the gunner’s mate on watch, and—well—" “So they picked me,’’ supplied Snappy. “Somebody—one of the officers—remem- bered the disagreement that Whiting had with you a few weeks ago. ‘Then, Mr. Mette of the seaman guard division told them that you were on watch; so the gun- nery officer started out to investigate. The fact that the barrel of your revolver was still dirty and warm, and that the cylinder contained three empty cartridges proves beyond a doubt—so they say—that you fired the shot.” The master-at-arms looked steadily at Snappy as though expecting him to ‘speak, but he was too wrapped up in his thoughts even to have noticed that Dinny had quit talking. “Well, Snappy, I’m goin’ back on deck now and I’ll keep my ears and eyes open Maybe I’ll have something to tell you when I come back.” He closed the heavy door quietly and the keys again rattled in the door, but it was not until his feet could be heard on the steel ladder as he climbed to the gun-deck that Snappy realized that he had gone. “Dinny’s a brick, if he is a ‘Jimmy-Legs’,” he meditated thoughtfully. ‘“There’s not many fellows who would take as much interest in me and this affair—especially when everything points in the same direc- tion—toward me.” For a long time he sat motionless, his eyes staring blindly at the hundreds of little round holes in the steel door of his cell, the skin across his forehead tightening and ex- panding at intervals. Finally, through force of habit, he put his thoughts into words, as though framing a truth—and it was a truth—in the form of an alibi. “Now I was in the middle compartment of the starboard ammunition passageway when I shot at that rivet head. Dinny said that Mr. Whiting was shot while going through the port ammunition passageway. That ought to let me out even if everything else is against me.’ Gradually, however, his face fell. “But—sufferin’ barnacles—who would believe me? That I was in the starboard ammunition passageway.” A moment later with the slightest trace of moisture in his discouraged gray eyes, Adventure © he dropped over on his side on the steel deck and pillowed his head upon his arm. If his superiors had thought to diminish his chances of sleep and rest by refusing him a hammock they were doomed to dis- appointment, for fifteen minutes later he was snoring heavily, quite unaware of the crude nature of his bed, the chill of the cold, steel deck, or the cruelty of the hard rivet heads which dug mercilessly into his ribs. A DULL, heavy, thunderous ex- $r plosion, accompanied by a rending and tearing of metal and a terrific shock that threw him bodily across the length of the cell, brought the dazed Snappy back to consciousness. He sat up, dazedly, and rubbed his sleep-burdened eyes awk- wardly with the back of his hands. At the same time he became aware of a fierce throbbing in his head and of something warm and liquid trickling down the sides of his face. As he brought his hands, plastered with blood, down from his face, his eyes fell upon the sharp, blood-covered angle-iron at the bottom of the cell door, and he realized that the concussion had thrown him diagonally across the cell and deposited him, head foremost, upon the sharp angle-iron. “Well,”? he puffed breathlessly, as he investigated the rugged rent in the top of his head, ‘‘it don’t seem to be so bad, but I didn’t think that Id be called upon to paint this box-stall red. I wonder af He did not finish the sentence. A united and insistent whining of bugles sounding the call to abandon ship reached his ears. As he peered through the little round holes in the heavy door that held him captive he saw white-uniformed chief petty officers racing by from their living quarters, ap- parently to their respective divisions. “Something must have hit something,” he mused grimly. Again his hand found its way unconsciously to the aching wound in his scalp. “And something sure did hit me,’ he concluded seriously. Suddenly‘he noticed that something was wrong; that the steel deck of his cell was no longer seemingly on a level with the uni- verse. Either his eyes were playing queer pranks or the deck listed decidedly to the starboard. He had almost concluded that his eyes did not deceive him and that the deck was actually listed slightly when an- other terrific explosion, more tremendous . COMmicloooks (C@