Adventure Magazine Cover — page 140: what you’re looking at

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

134 back from the somber panels of the cabin. He sat down on the bench that, built into the bulkhead, followed three sides of this comfortable sea dining-room, and there sat smoking in tranquil expectancy. In the dusk beyond the fringe of light, for all his sudden happiness, he looked old, worn, a shadow of the adventurer who had sailed the Wraith in the years the black-hulled schooner was known throughout the island seas of the South Pacific; a familiar sight boldly sailing into the least frequented ports of the East, a dark romantic mystery as at long intervals she would enter the great roadsteads of those eastern waters. A few minutes before seven came a deep booming voice which brought the captain to his feet. From somewhere on shore came the remembered hail— “On board the Wraith!” Then the sound of a creaking sea-ladder and the two men met on deck. The gray- bearded gigantic mate crushed his old com- mander in mighty arms—he laughed, he wept, he prayed, he cursed, in a breath, all at once, for he was again in the old mad days and he was French. Before going below, the two friends stood for a moment by the useless wheel that once had been a part of their long night watches. They looked out from the stern over the level surface of dark water and it seemed to Mal- low that the Wraith was living again. The other sent a long, slow look across the Sound, dark except for the broad path of silver that stretched from a rising moon straight to the black hull of the schooner. The first flush of Cartier’s happiness paled, for as he stared he saw one shadow over all. It covered his old commander on the deck of this fantom ship; it covered the ship and it spread out over the dreary expanse of this dead back-water. He shivered, for it seemed that the shadow was death. And yet the dinner in the cheerful little cabin sent his spirits soaring and this laugh- ing shipmaster opposite him gave little suggestion of age and decay. His eyes were too bright, his laugh too ringing for that. A light wine was on the table and the mate wondered a bit as he remembered the heavier taste of Captain Mallow and the nights of song they had held in this selfsame cuddy, yes, by Harry, at this very table! And those wild nights had stayed in his memory bright spots in the long years of toil and risk. In jest the partners called Adventure them banquets of state, and always held them by way of celebrating the success of some especially hazardous voyage. Neither man was a heavy drinker but after months at sea, Captain Mallow would proclaim a banquet of state to be held in the saloon of the Wraith, and always the sitting was late and riotous. So now through the dinner as the mild wine was sipped, the mate wondered. When the cigars were brought out at the end of the meal, Captain Mallow bade Cartier sit still while he cleared the table of dishes and cloth. The mate sat back in his chair and watched his friend’s face brighten, suddenly grow mysterious. - ‘“Roguish, that’s the word,” he thought. His curiosity deepened as the old man left the cabin. He came back in less than a minute, breathing heavily, lugging two nickeled buckets of unusual size. Cartier grinned as he saw snugly packed in their beds of ice, two great bottles, each larger than a quart, something less than a mag- num. The years were swept away as the captain dropped the buckets on the floor, one beside each chair. “From Paul’s Wine Shop?” “Paul himself gave it to me—forty years ago,’ said the captain reverently. In silence the wine was poured and then Jean Cartier looked across the table at his friend. The gleam of the lamp fell full on the Wrecker’s face ashe stood with glass raised high. The yellow wine shone through, sparkling, translucent, and in turn the mate’s glass sent its shafts of shattered brilliance into the corners of the cabin. “To the Wraith!” cried Wrecker Mallow. “Bottoms up!” He drank slowly and Cartier saw in his face the instantaneous effect of the aged wine, the satisfaction it gave, the glow it induced.. And at the same instant as he tilted his own glass, doubt, bewilderment, almost a sense of dread, came over him. What was this insipid drink? Some sort of a beverage, by Harry! Yet there was the captain tingling to its biting strength. In a flash, as he drank,-the mate conquered the impulse to spit out the drink and sensing something wrong, smiled and reached down at his side for the bottle. He was French. “Ah,” he thought, “‘I wonder what chance acquaintance visiting the Wrecker has done this thing? Sneaked back some night perhaps and stolen the most cherished Sj CORMICLOO© ~~ com