Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

I2 go to the New World as anywhere else, and a bit sooner. ‘There’s gold there, to.be picked up in thestreams. Faith, Monsieur, we'll all be rich.” Nancy had sprung to her feet, and tears which she could not keep back flooded her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks. But tears had been too common a sight upon that ship that day to cause any comment. Cherie buried her face in her arm upon the rail, and wept, and Barney’s blue eyes be- gan to blink rapidly. He choked back any pangs of homesickness he might have felt with a merry whistle, and slapped Nancy upon the shoulder. “Have done with tears, Monsieur,” he laughed. ‘‘Save them for another time. Sure, and I guess we’ll need them soon enough at best.” Dod Nancy dried her eyes. She did not Weis! care for herself, for the love of ad- venture ran warm and red in her veins. But the picture her imagination drew of the two men in a shabby lodging in Lille, waiting for her to come back from a mission from which she would not return, and of the long days of anxiety and grief her father would feel until she could contrive to get to him some word of her plight, was more than she could bear with unconcern. ‘“°Tis a long journey these women are taking to marry their men in the New World,” she said after a while. “But wom- en have ever dared all dangers for the sake of the men they love.” Cherie smiled, but a smile in which there was no mirth. ‘‘Love and romance, I fear, have no place in the hearts of such as we. We are going out to marry men whom we have never seen. For myself, I shall take the first who offers. Yes, the first man who speaks me when I land, him will I have for husband.” “TI do not understand.”? Nancy’s eyes were wide now. ‘“I thought women, and men, too, married but for love. I would wed for love, and love alone.”’ “The world has been good to you, Mon- sieur, but with us—it is not so. It is a world of misery and sorrow, of wretchedness and unhappiness.”’ She pointed to a group of bedraggled women leaning listlessly over the rail at the stern, as if straining their tired eyes to catch one last glimpse of the land they were leaving. ‘‘Human beings, though, like the rest of us,’”’ she added significantly. Adventure “God have mercy on their souls—and on mine. Derelicts all, Monsieur.” ‘“‘Who are they?” asked Barney. ‘“‘Who knows?” answered Cherie, with an- other shrug of her shapely shoulders. ‘‘Pick- pockets, thieves, murderers—worse. ‘The scum of the alleys of Paris. Fine ladies of quality! I warrant you there are no greater rogues in all Europe, nor any in Christen- dom more steeped in misery and despair.” ‘“‘And so they are going out to—what is the name of the place?” ‘““Tortuga, in the Spanish Indies. I know nothing of it save what I have learned from one of the mariners who is lately from that place. A small island off the coast of His- paniola, or Domingo, as some call it now. A rendezvous, it is, for all the riffraff of those seas, but a pleasant enough island, and very fertile, so that the French West India Company has a mind to hold it per- manently for France. ‘“‘But there are no women there, this sea- man tells me, and Monsieur, the Governor, thinking to make his fierce sea-rovers settle down contentedly as colonists, hit upon the idea of fetching out a shipload of women to be their wives. Well, I am one of the sheep bought in the market-place and now being delivered.” “Do none go willingly?” “Ay, some among us do—those who would save their necks, or their carcasses from rotting in the hulks.”’ ‘“‘And the men among you?” ‘“‘The same—save that they are men. They will be sold when we reach Tortuga. Well, I hope to get an honest master—and you, too. If I don’t—I would kill the man who put the lash to my back!” ‘Sold!’ cried Nancy. “Oui, the women for wives, the men for servants. You will be knocked down to the highest bidder, for six, eight, mayhap twelve, years. That is why you were kid- naped. But didn’t they turn the tables on that evil-visaged scoundrel who brought you aboard! The whole ship is laughing at the way they served him.” “Yellow Eyes, you mean.” ‘“‘True, his eyes are yellow, the evilest ever I saw, too. It makes my flesh creep to see him. And what a rage he isin. He came aboard to get his pay for kidnaping you two boys, and the quota of indentured servants we are taking out not being full, Captain Jean calmly carries him off, too. CoOMmichoooks CO