Adventure Magazine Cover — page 37: what you’re looking at

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

Judique on the Floor of tin, it came ashore, scampered up the cable of a small fruiter whose bows Donald could just see round the shed and got aboard through the hawse hole. Once Don- ald would have chased that rat, but now he had not raised a hand to frighten it} that rat had a perfect right to deck and hold pickings; a large charity possessed Donald. Behind him he could hear the intermit- tent whir of a windlass, the creaking of a derrick, a voice giving orders, the pad of bare feet, the dumping of burdens in the shed. He looked back, not very curious. The small fruiter—the Luiza—was unload- ing bananas in bunches and oranges in crates. The colored stevedores were get- ting in each other’s way, stopping to look down river and up to the town. The driv- ing voice grew louder. Something in the tone of that voice made Donald look round again; it was not Scotch, nor Irish, but a brogue between. “Blue Nose,’ murmured Donald as he spied the mate wearing only pants and a shirt and lolling on the rail. The man was cursing, not fluently but in a sodden indifferent manner as if it was a routine that was useless. He seemed to be soliloquizing rather than swearing; the words oozed from him like molasses; the negroes would have paid more heed to mo- Jasses. “‘Loaded,”? was Donald’s further com- ment. He turned back to his shadow, cuddled once more to his fiddle and gave himself up to the lotus-laden afternoon. He was aroused by singing; the negroes were crooning some queer chant’ of their own, a melody Donald had never heard; and, obeying his demon—the spirit in his fiddle that had carried him away from the hard harbors of the North—he opened the case. - Covering the fiddle were a shirt and some socks, for a Wisconsin landlord held his trunk; he removed these; then came sam- ples of the razors he peddled as his side line, a packet of E strings, a copy of the Bzill- board open at “‘Medicine Shows.” These he replaced after he felt for his tuning fork. He did not use it; his fiddle was: near enough in tune for him to pick out the negroes’ chorus in a low pizzicato. When he learned it he took out his bow, screwed it up and swung into the chorus fortissimo. The negroes responded; the volume of 35 voices rose with spirit and in willing unison after some black faces had peeped out to see the tramp who with half-shut eyes was supplying the accompaniment. But Donald was not satisfied to go on re- peating that melody. His inventive Nor- dic blood began weaving in variations, alien motives, little kick-up-your-heels flour- ishes, echoes of the reels and strathspeys, even the skirl of the pibroch—the mad bat- tle music that is deep in the blood of every Highlander. Donald was a fine fiddler, the kind raised on the lonely, ice-locked farms, in the frozen harbors, on the decks of the sealers and fish- ers of the North. The dance tunes of St. Anthony, the madelines, “‘Damnation Har- bor,” “Pinch-Belly Tickle” were jerking the feet and driving the arms of these languid sun-steeped natives of the Antilles. A big bulk came between Donald and the river; he stopped playing; the mate was glowering on him; the man was gloomy enough to silence a seraph. “Go on, man; ye’re after getting more out o’ my soldierers than a lash. don’t stop!” He barked thickly. He was of the same thin-jawed, tight-lipped race as Donald, but rather too full-bodied, too puffy and flushed beneath the eyes. Donald put his fiddle back in the case. This man was giving him orders as if Donald were under him. Besides, the music had played Donald back to his beginnings; those fighting tunes would not let him take water of any man. “T’ve played all I want.” “Then get to off this wharf.” Donald arose and took his stand, far from the wall so that he could not be driven back upon it. “Judique’s on the floor, and who'll put him off?” he said, his hands ready for the tussle. But the mate’s domineering was only the burned-out habit of the man; there was no fire behind it; a feeble grin relaxed his sour visage. “It’s a long time since I heard that word,” he said. ‘So you’re a red head from Judique? I’m from Margaree. You might lend a hand with my niggers. Britishers and French they are, and first time in this port. Play that tune, will yer, till we clean out this hold? It'll mean a meal to yer and maybe a drap o’ something good.” Being asked, not ordered, Donald an NOOK C©