Adventure Magazine Cover — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

620 able than Koh-i-noors), I was invalided to guard duty over our four precious rascals in the galley. Hitherto I had only taken my turn at this; but for the whole of the last day during which we lay anchored in the fiord I kept the necessary eye on them, and played the bugbear generally. The four, now well fed and warmed, began to take life very easily, and to joke with their jailors; but that the least oppor- tunity would fill them once more with the old Nick was not to be doubted. During that last day, for instance, Carrol pro- posed, if I would set them free and arm them, to make me sole master of three parts of the treasure. To murder the China- men was the merest detail of the plan; and, although he opened the matter jocosely, I could see that he was not altogether sure as to whether I was to be tempted or not. Having heard him out to the end, however, I laughed in his face, and he laughed back. “You treated me so faithfully and honor- ably in ’Frisco,”’ said I, “that I feel sure you would do the same now if I set you free. All you have to do is to give your word to be believed by any one aboard this ship. Why, man, I don’t believe—L honestly don’t—that you ever so much as kept a promise given by yourself—to your- self. Suppose that yours had been the successful party, how many of them would you have allowed to survive to tell the tale? “And Ill give you others a piece of mighty good advice. It’s this—when you go ashore at Rio with your share of the fifty thousand that’s to be handed over to you, keep an eye on Carrol here. He'll want the whole of it, and he’ll get it—if you don’t watch out!” “Parrish don’t think much of you, do ’e?”’? said Kelsey. “And I dunno’s I blame *Im.”’ “Tt’s a long, rolling road to Rio,” said Brandreth cheerfully, “‘and between here and there the ocean’s deep, and maybe we'll all roll on the bottom together.” “T dreamed last night,” said Swigot, “that the ship blew up, and while I was in the air the ropes that bound me burst asunder, and I fell flop into the water, and was just striking out for shore when I gets all tangled up in the Chinks’ pig-tails and is dragged under.” “On the level, Jim,” said Carrol, “what do you think the treasure’s worth?” ) Adventure “Well,” said I, “I toted the smallest share of anybody from the cliff to the boat. And I calculate roughly that that share was about twenty-eight hundred pounds of gold—that’s more than a million dollars, just what I carried alone. Some of the boys made as many trips as I did and car- ried about a hundred pounds each time to my sixty. Then there are the emeralds and things, and the good Lord only knows what they’re worth!” “When I was in the land of the free,” said Kelsey pathetically, “emeralds was high.” eee OND thus we argued and estimated, eaing just as in a café four men may sit about a table and guess by the hour as to the fortune of Mr. Vanderbilt or Mr. Rockefeller, starting upon guessed premises, and arriving, of course, nowhere. It was wonderful to see how cheerful a topic to these four men was that of the millicns that they had all but secured for them- selves. So every family loves to dwell upon the gold mine that should have made it rich; or upon the timber lands sold at the wrong time by the unprophetic grand- father. And so, I fancy, the civilized world over, the most toothsome of all gossip where men are met together is that of un- boundable wealth. And if it were not for heavy gold, light women, and fast horses, civilized man would soon lose the use of his tongue. A figure blocked the galley door and a shadow fell among us conversing. Carmen was on her rounds. Fifty times a day she would thus steal silently upon the prisoners, stand a while in the frame of the door, look her fill upon Carrol in his fallen fortunes, and steal as quietly away. But on this occasion she spoke. “Tt is better,” she said, “that fat man be kill before he do mischief. You think he mind them rope? Not so much!” And she snapped her distorted little fingers. “Vou keep faith with heem, but nobody keep faith with me. When I say I come along, and not want any gol’ you promise me that man for myself. Now you not give heem me. But I tell you. I creep in here some fine night, when nobody on the look, and then I have my little fling with heem!”’ She gazed for a long time into Carrol’s COMmMICLOOCkKKS. EGO |