Adventure Magazine Cover — page 84: what you’re looking at

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

74 was his own, Will. He smiled a little mockingly as his thought crept along half- forgotten knowledge back to the school days’ interest in its Latin origin. ‘“Guzliel- mus—helmet of protection.”’ In spite of his intentions, that was what he had turned into for these women; particularly for Margaret. Surely there was no escaping the webbed irony of the Fates. There did seem to be a thread to which each mortal dangled, helpless as a Jumping Jack. Per- haps the dead did live, and meddle. From where came impulses and accidents, the long toe-to-heel sequences that marched off with a man, willy-nilly? Then, as if his thought of her had called her, Margaret came on deck and toward him. In her loneliness she had taken old Tom into her servitude. What they talked of Heddon had no way of knowing, and did not care. But she was by him a great deal while he worked on his box—her box, now— which he had finished, but would not call completed as long as her interest in it seemed to be why she was with him so much. “Tf you let her know those pearls are not pearls, I’ll throw you overboard,’’ Heddon had told him. Tom blew his nose, shuffled about, then glared up defiantly: “Ve an’ me ain’t frien’s no more, Will Heddon. A man what kills something that prutty, like what you done, is got a bad heart in ’im! I’m disapp’inted in ye, Will Heddon!” “You are right about the heart,” Heddon jeered, “and I’m right about your going overboard—if you tell.” “T won’t tell ’er. But she’s got eyes, she has!”’ “Tt isn’t her eyes I care about. your tongue.” “T hate liars!’’ said old Tom, glaring. Then he tramped off, full of bandy- legged hauteur. Now Margaret came on deck and up to Heddon. She had the faculty of not being embarrassed. That was art, or perhaps an inheritance. Gloria was much the same. ‘Tom has just said those are the Reefs. It’s Are they?” “He knows as well as [ do.” “May I see?” She ignored his rudeness and glanced at the telescope. He gave it to her. ‘Your poor hand, isn’t it going to be all right, at all?” Adventure Heddon put his right hand behind him. It was still crippled and bandaged. “It’s all right now. Good enough.” She smiled a little with a sort of furtive kindness, then braced the glass against a stay, looking toward the low-lying, dimly seen splotch, like a flat cloud that had fallen out of the sky. She was not trying to see the Reefs. Though she looked for several moments, he could see that she did not in the least change the focal adjustment. She lowered the glass, and, looking out to sea, asked— ‘“‘Mr. Heddon, what are you going to do with Gloria?” “Send her to Sydney.” “Friends of yours?” She looked at him. “No.” “Then how do you know she will be all right?” “T don’t.” “But you care?” she asked guardedly. “Not much. No.” “You still feel, Mr. Heddon, that you won’t let her go with me?” ‘“‘And where do you think you are going?”’ “You don’t imagine,” she asked, ‘“‘that I want to remain here, on these Reefs, do your” “T see,”’ said Heddon. “You see what?” “Old Jeffries!” She colored, but quite coolly— “In some ways he is at least a gentleman!” “That,” he asked bitterly, ‘is important, is 1t?” “Sometimes I wonder how mean you would like to be, if you could! And why— why did you try to make me think that those were not pearls?”’ “Tom Wateman goes overboard,” Hed- don said between his teeth. “Old Tom had nothing to do with it. I’ve worn too many imitation peayls—I love pearls—I’ve looked at the best imitations I could find—not to know real pearls. And if I hadn’t already hated you, I would have hated you for what you did!” Heddon glared at her; but she was un- afraid, not even angry. Her eyes seemed daring him to do whatever he wanted to do; and his impulse was to hurt her, to crush her brutally—but with an embrace. She knew; she seemed to watch, waiting, a little breathless, nearly defiant, yet submissive. The mysterious antagonism of attraction played between them, electrically. They cConmicloool 1O)