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 Smooth-Bore Hermanos to have forgotten and buried in the dead past quick. However, the only man who can do without experience is a prophet. Cap- tain Duncan, the master of the Fortuna, had been on a shindy with me about two years before when General Torres y Pesces had paid him three million and ninety dollars to escape to Curacao. The three million was in paper money of the Torres Government and the ninety dollars was in gold and silver. Duncan still had the three million dollars in his ship’s box and we had had a laugh over it the night before. ‘“ ‘Lieutenant Connel, find Captain Dun- can and say to him that General Hope wants to see him,’ I shouted up the hatch. “In a few minutes Duncan stuck his head over and I told him in Spanish what I wanted. ‘““ ‘Now, you Berkintowitz fellows,’ said I, ‘I am going to enlist you and give you your first month’s pay. If you don't, I make you walk the plank. We can’t feed you on a dangerous trip like this.’ ‘“* ‘Please, mister, ve von’t eat much.’ * “Down came Duncan, marching with the ship’s box in his arms, and an armed cuard of four men. “T administered the oath of allegiance and then commanded the sergeant to open the treasury and pay them. He opened the box and there lay the packets of green, yellow and red ten-thousand, five-thou- sand and one-thousand-dollar bills. The Berkintowitz who had been so silent and retiring till that moment came to life with a great joy on his freckled face. With great gravity I took two one-thousand-dollar bills and gave one to each. ‘“ “Your wages will be doubled for active service,’ I said. “Duncan nearly died from swallowing snickers mixed with tobacco-juice. The guard marched away and the brothers began to come out of their trance. They grabbed each other and did a regular Yiddisher dance. “ “Hey, hey, cut that out, cut that out!’ I yelled at them. They had gath- ered something of the conduct expected of them from the men of the guard, and the way they tried to be a company of two, front and salute, was rich. “T got them berthed forward, got those noisy suits off of them and put the sergeant to drilling them as soon as we struck the Gulf Stream. Then every day Duncan and 635 I used to lie back under the awning and watch Connel sitting in his hammock try- ing to teach them foot movements and the manual of arms. Laugh? By gypsum, it was the funniest performance I ever saw. They could not have kept step if they had had only one leg apiece. Their idea of a gun was something to parade with like a flag on a stick, though both was perfect on ‘parade rest.’ ‘One day later on, as we lay becalmed off Greater Abaco, I thought I would have a little target practise. The bo’sun rowed out inthe dinghy about two hundred yards and set up a board and box target. My experience has been that nearly every other tramp or roustabout on the docks or the streets of any American city is a drilled man. I’ll go up against anything south of Key West with any kind of a bunch I can pull together north of it. Our men all made a fair showing, using the Winchesters out of Duncan’s cabin as I did not want to open the cases below. I thought I would try Joey and Abie. Say, do you know I pretty nearly had to break every rib they had even to get them to take hold of a gun with a load in it? Finally, with Duncan standing by with a belaying-pin behind him and with me holding a bayonet at his stomach, we got Joey to try a shot. He leaned against the rail, pretended to squint along the barrel and, just about the time he had both eyes shut and the butt care- lessly scrouged up in his neck, he pulled trigger. I got the gun as it was going over- board and Joey flew end over end and lit on the main hatch. Slowly he got up, with one eye banged shut and his nose bleeding, rummaging around in the front of his undershirt with his fingers. He pulled out the thousand-dollar bill of Torres money and held it out to me. ‘“‘ ‘Take it, mister, take it. centage is too strong for me.’ “Well, sir, nothing would make them take hold of a gun again, until Connel hap- pened to think of telling them that the kick was caused by the rifling in the barrel and that a smooth-bore would be just the thing. He hauled out a couple of the sev- eral old Mannleichers we had and showed them what he meant. That satisfied them. That was what I equipped them with. That is how the Smooth-bore Brothers got their name. “T_nearly forgot to tell you about the Der per- COMICOOCKKS. GO S|