Adventure Magazine Cover — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

Judique on the Floor “Me believe it, sir? Why, of course not, of course not. Why, I’se been eddi- cated, sir.”’ In his fear lest this should be doubted Parkes dropped his white man’s manner of speech. | TAVISH led the way to his cabin. He walked unsteadily, tripping over "— the step. He continued talking as he fumbled for his light. | “Parkes half believes in that voodoo,” he murmured in the dark. “ ’Tain’t all hum- bug neither. I’ve seen things in them Is- lands, varmints coming out of the woods ~ the tomtoms. Same as you’d whistle a O ) The light came on, and Donald started a little, for his head was close to the skin of a Jarge snake tacked around the mirror. The cabin was decorated with other souvenirs of the Caribbean—native knives, Belize finger-pinchers, shell necklaces. On the desk where the mate kept his books was a woman’s satin slipper full of burned and un- used matches, beside it a bottle of medi- cine. Donald’s interest returned to the scaly festoons of the snake. “YT shot that feller in Martinique,” con- tinued the mate. ‘Laying for me in the grass, he was. Frenchy was laying for me too, ’cos of Louise, little witch.” The mate had opened a little cupboard hidden behind the life belt and was extract- ing a bottle and two glasses. He did this with the slow carefulness of a man accus- tomed to allowing for his condition. “Louise says, ‘Behold, a snake!’ I see it, but think it is gin swizzles. Been hitting them for a week and doing no work. Bad, that. Worst of drinking ashore. Man can’t stand it. I said, ‘There’s no snake.’ “Frenchy dares me to take it by the tail. I gets up. Ain’t afraid of nothin’ I can see, snakes in or out of the bottle. Then Louise draws me gun and shoots it. Then the little cutie wants to shoot Frenchy. Snake was this real fer-de-lance, and Frenchy was try- ing to get me to walk into his jaws.” “Is that Louise?” asked Donald, point- ing to the photograph of a pretty Creole tacked to the door of the mate’s cellar. ' Tavish bleared at the picture, painfully trying to arouse his muddy memory. “No; that’s Suzanne—I think.” ‘‘What happened to the Frenchman?”’ The mate sobered somewhat; he looked . 37 hunted, as if those memories were baying bloodhounds. “Don’t ask questions. But never mind him. Hegothis. Let’sbehappy. Fill up.” “Thanks, but I don’t feel like drinking,” said Donald. He wanted to get out of that cabin, away from this sodden brute. The mate glared at him with suspicion. “You ain’t a prohibition officer, are ye? Ye were spying round al] afternoon. What for? What’s your game?” “TY am late second violin and barker for Ripley’s Roysterers, a medicine show, now bust in the sticks. I beat it down here to get warm. I peddle razors between the acts. Going to hang round here till the fairs open. I can play any instrument in a week good enough to kick the dust in a parade——_”’ ‘And ye’re a Judique man, ye say?”’ said the mate, interrupting Donald’s display ad- vertisement of himself. ‘Then pilot me into George’s Bay running east out of Coomberland Strait. Tide making. Wind nor’east. Ye’ve a full ship. What’s yer chance o’ hitting MacIsaac Rock? Con me into Antigonish. In the dark; in a fog; ice about; no lights; con me—con mel”’ “TI con ye to lay down and sober up. We don’t ask men to sup in Judique and then bark at them. Good day to ye.” Donald was Jeaving in indignation and disgust, but Tavish caught hold of him. The little flash of the man he had been, the man that could navigate tickles in snow- storms, who could chance reefs with a foot of free water, the man with cats’ eyes in the dark for harbor entrances, died out of him. “Don’t go. What’s the use of us fighting? I have a proposition to make ye. Sit down. I had to try ye out, ’cos, ye see, it’s like this “ The mate sagged back into his bunk and resumed his rambling speech. As he sailed around in his mental fog it was some time before Donald understood he was being offered a job on a rum-runner. There was a yacht somewhere which the mate was to command. Donald was a Judique man— the mate took that for granted now—there- fore Donald was a sailor. Also he was not an American citizen, and the more aliens aboard the more plausible the false registry, the faked destinations. “But I have no papers,” urged Donald. “T can’t ship as mate.”’ “Ye can ship as anything in this business. DOOLK C@ inn