Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 53: what you’re looking at

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

Days of Morgan they go back and show their noses in Eng- land. Nay, I will not play them false, nor deceive them in any way soever. My mind is made up, Captain Stillingfleet. My word hath been passed to my countrymen here, and I will abide with them, and go away upon our own lay until we have found riches to buy our pardons beyond a doubt.” He shook his head at her, at this, as if at a loss to make her out. “Why, ods-fish!” said he, pounding the table with his fist. “‘But a few hours ago you were hot for going back to England.” “TI have but availed myself of a woman’s inalienable prerogative,’’ she smiled. “‘A what?”’ he cried, looking at her in per- plexity. ‘The right to change my mind. I am now killing two birds with one stone, where I had thought there was but one,”’ she add- ed, thinking of her father’s estates, her own girlhood home, that she could remember but dimly, but loved, and now so strangely had an opportunity to save, temporarily at least, from the alien usurper to whom they had been awarded by the king. ‘“Two birds, Captain Stillingfleet,’’ she finished serious- ly, and turned to leave him just as the Spanish girl came into the cabin, looking very lovely in a gown of black and red. She looked at Nancy without seeing her, but in her languid eyes were smiles for the English Captain, smiles that Nancy knew meant treachery and deceit, so that she pressed her teeth into her lip at the sight of them, but which he, poor fool, saw only as the smiles of a woman for a man. So he smiled back at her. Whereat Nancy, with the majesty of a queen, for all her sailor’s breeches and rag- ged shirt, made an imperious exit, yet lin- gered long enough to call back over her shoulder— “I began with an ambition to kill one bird, Captain Stillingfleet, but found there were two—and have now discovered a third.”’ Which speech mystified the poor fellow more than ever. CHAPTER XII THE PIRATES’ ISLAND Tar noon Nancy and Pierre had a very good observation, and finding themselves in the lat. of 18°41” N., and lon- gitude 75°18” W., the girl called a council of 51 the men before the mast and gave each among them a chance to express his desires. The sick men had recovered from the effects of their gluttony, and having fixed their names to the agreement, and been allotted their share of the spoils they had already taken, were as eager as the rest to seek purchase. The question of what to do with the Spaniards under the hatches was upper- most in Nancy’s mind, and speaking of the matter to the men, all agreed to her propo- sal that they should be set ashore where they could find food and water and thus sustain themselves. ‘So, lads,”’ said Nancy, ‘‘since we are all of a mind on this point, our first dispute, what say you to putting these Dons ashore on the main of Cuba, from which, as the chart shows, we are not far distant?” ‘Well, Miss, I mean Captain, asking your pardon,” said Jim Rimble at this, roll- ing his eyes at her so earnestly that she had to bite her lips to keep from smiling in his rugged face, ‘“‘but what’s the use of getting a hornet’s nest around our ears, as you might say, when there ain’t exactly any need of it?” “‘Why, what mean you by getting a hor- net’s nest around our ears, Jim Rimble?” demanded Nancy, glancing from him to Pierre, whose eyes were snapping and blink- ing away at a furious rate through the bushy hedge of whiskers that he seemed to be hiding behind. ““Sacré! Mademoiselle,” interjected the Frenchman, ‘“‘Monsieur Jean Rumble be——”’ “Jim Rimble, you pollyvooer,” roared the Master; “not Jean Rumble.” “‘Jean Rumble, then, Monsieur, if you will have it that way,” replied Pierre, shrugging his shoulders, while Jim Rimble gritted his teeth. “He is right, no? The fact that we are cruising in these waters will come to the ears of the Spaniards quickly enough as it is.” “That it will,’ bellowed Jim Rimble, “that it will, or I will kiss a pig.”’ “Tf we put these Dons:on the Main, why, and they have legs, haven’t they?” demand- ed Trueheart Jackson. ‘“Then won’t they just naturally walk off?” “Well, and what if they do?” replied Nancy. “We shall be well rid of them.” “Ay, but suppose they get to one of” their settlements,” broke in Jim Rimble, CoOMmichoooks CO