Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

10 twin coals upon her, and, answering their mute question, she nodded her head, and crawled weakly to her feet, and with his as- sistance gained the ground. She was weak, and grasped the wheel of the cart to steady herself. She saw by the sun that it must be on toward evening. At her side a tangled thicket, stunted trees, bent by the wind, dark, wild, and forbidding ‘as any spot she had ever seen; in front of her a rocky beach, along which the calm sea lapped and gurgled like a child at play. Close in, a small boat, with two men at the oars, and, in the distance, half a mile off- shore, a brigantine, on which the sails were breaking out; and she could see the seamen in her shrouds, and hear the ropes slipping in the falls. The man with the yellow eyes emerged from the cart with the Irish lad, his head dangling between his shoulders, the face cov- ered with clotted blood. He put the boy down, picked her up, and strode down to the beach, where he waded out to his hips in the water and threw her in the bottom of the boat. “Lie still and hold your tongue,” growled one of the men at the oars. Yellow Eyes scrambled back over the rocks, and came down again with the Irish lad over his shoulders. He dropped the boy into the boat beside Nancy and, looking meaningly at the seaman at the bow oars, held out his hand. The sailor shook his head and pointed toward the ship. Yellow Eyes nodded at this, and shoving off into deep water, wading out to his mid- dle, swung himself into the stern sheets. The sailors fell to their oars. Presently, Nancy, on her back in the bottom of the boat, saw the shadow of the ship fall across them. She was jerked to her feet and thrust up the ladder in the waist, followed by the two sailors, with the Irish. lad between them, and Yellow Eyes, who vanished into the big cabin. The boat was swung up at the bits, the yards were squared away, and, the sails filling, the brig- antine dropped down the bay on the ebbing tide, her nose turned to the open sea. The ship had scarce got a bone in her teeth in the freshening breeze when there was a commotion behind her, and Nancy, who had sunk down in the scuppers, turned to see the man with the yellow eyes throw off two seamen who were clinging to him, and rush to the rail with a look on his face Adventure so full of astonishment that it would have been ludicrous but for the rage and hate in the eyes that burned like blazing fagots, the purple lips, now almost black and twisted with passion, and the empty red gullet which the girl observed now plainly for the first time, with a shudder, for the tongue had been cut out. She turned her head to shut out the wretched sight, and her glances swept the roughening waters of the little cove as it broadened into the channel and over which the whitecaps danced with crests that rose and fell, and broke into glistening sprays of foam. She saw the dimming shore-line, the rocks and scrub oaks, and against their background the cart, with the shaggy horse standing there patiently, as if waiting for its master to come back. CHAPTER III THE SHIP OF BRIDES A MOAN at her side made Nancy turn, and then she sank on one knee to the deck beside the Irish lad, who, lying still where he had been thrown, now opened his eyes. A wave of tenderness swept over her. “Forgive me,’ she said, and gently smoothed back the matted hair, disclosing a long, jagged cut, that laid open the scalp to the skull. No one paid the slightest attention to them as she looked about her for a friendly face. The ship was in the utmost confusion. The waist, as far as the forecastle, was a litter of bales, and chests of goods, and a great number of casks in a heap, which a dozen tatterdemalions, haggard of face, and -wretched-looking beyond belief, were pass- ing below and stowing away in the hold un- der the direction of the cape-merchant, or purser. Abaft the mainmast, at the cap- stan, stood Yellow Eyes, head sunk between his shoulders, in an attitude of utter dejec- tion. The deck swarmed with men, and wo- men, too; some in rags, others in finery that looked oddly out of place amid such sur- roundings. They lounged along the gun- wales, gazing off toward the shore, nowadim line of haze astern, or else sprawled full length, or sat where they could find a place, on chest or crate, as if worn out and ex- hausted. COMmMichoooks (©