Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 66: what you’re looking at

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

64 “Ay, that he did, I will swear. Canst thou not see it in his evil eyes? The man was born a devil and does not deserve to live—nor shall I spare him now. He hath come at last to his reckoning with me, for the injuries he hath done me since he kid- naped me out of France; for the murder that he did upon the old Baptiste; for the betrayal of us all at Tortuga; ay, and for killing the man IJ—I—love,” she finished, turning an agonized face to where young Stillingfleet lay upon the deck. “Here is an account I shall pay home myself, an’ no one else will aid me.” With this the dumb man, in his molten eyes a thousand demons gleaming, sudden- ly thrust his hand within his shirt, and when it came forth again there was a pistol in it. He raised it to the level of her fore- head, and ran his burnished eye along the barrel, just as Barney McGiggen and Three- legs came racing down the deck together. The lad threw himself in front of the girl as the tongueless one fired. Then he pitch- ed headlong to the deck without a moan, while Nancy, at his back, clasped her breast with both hands and sank beside him, for the same bullet had pierced them both. There was the flash of a tawny body, and with a deep-chested roar the three-legged dog for the second time in its short life hurled himself straight at the throat of Yellow Eyes, and his teeth met in the man’s corded neck. Had he been a full-grown dog he would have killed him, but even so the force of his weight and the snap of those jaws bore the dumb man backward, and he went down with a crash, just as Captain Stillingfleet rolled over in the scuppers and pulled himself to his féet. He took the situation in at a glance, and observing Cap- tain Morgan leaning over the rail, cursing his men and ordering them to come back, and catching him unawares, suddenly lifted him bodily in his arms and hurled him over- board. ' “Heave ahead, men in the tops, men upon the yards!” he commanded. ‘‘Get the sails to the yards, men, and step lively. Who is at the wheel there?” As Pierre took the helm and put it over, he cut the anchor cables with his own hand, and the Sxapdragon swung around and drifted down the cove on the tide. Fired by his zeal, and catching the meaning of his hurried orders, the men flew to obey. Then Captain Stillingfleet gathered Nancy Adventure into his arms. Standing over Yellow Eyes for a moment he said: ‘““Now, lads, take the dog off that human devil. We will attend to him later.” And then he bore the girl into the shade of the roundhouse where he laid her down again upon the deck, her head in Cherie’s lap. Bras-de-Mort and Jim Rimble, manning the gun on the poop, trained it upon the pirates and warned them that if they fired with their muskets or tried to come aboard they would sink them. Loaded down as they were with the pigs of lead, they dared not adventure, but picked up Captain Morgan and pulled off for their own ships, which presently they boarded and got under way. But by that time the Snapdragon, under all the canvas she could carry, was clear of the island, so that the buccaneers, seeing the hopelessness of the chase, soon gave it over and went about. And they saw them no more. “‘Will she live?” asked Captain Stilling- fleet, on his knees by Nancy. Cherie nodded. “Thank God! But better dead than that she had fallen a prize to Henry Morgan. And how is the lad?” he added, as Bras-de- Mort and Jim Rimble came up. “I need not ask. And he loved her, too.”’ His eyes filled with tears. He left the little group gathered about Nancy and went and stood by the rail. The wind was very fresh outside, with the Caribbean rolling and tumbling beneath it. ‘“‘HHow’s her head, Mr. Helmsman?” he asked presently. ‘South, southeast, sir,” replied Pierre in a voice thick with emotion. “Keep her full and let her go through the water.” “Ay, ay, sir.” CHAPTER XV JIM RIMBLE’S KEEPSAKE VWs Mistress Nancy opened her eyes she was lying on the deck in the shad- ow of the round house, her head in Cherie’s lap, and the sun was going down in the west, and sprinkling with flecks of gold the rippling wake the Snapdragon left in the blue waters of the Caribbean. She smiled faintly into the tear-dimmed eyes of the Frenchwoman, then closed her own again. CoOMmichoooks (CO