Adventure Magazine Cover, November 10, 1924 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

96 a IT IS a well-known fact in physics, pa that oil and water won’t mix. It “mm is a still better known fact at sea, where the two substances are brought to- gether through their attorneys, the engi- neers and the deck-officers, that unless both oil and water are unusually pure, they will form an unpleasant compound at the line of contact. On the City of Mombasa, the engineers were sufficiently alloyed with human nature to crow over their hereditary enemies, the deck crowd; and Williams, the captain, was impure enough to desire revenge. — So he dropped into the engineers’ mess one afternoon at tea time; and after in- quiring about certain ballast tanks started during the storm, improved the shining hour by taking the chief engineer to task before three juniors. “Why did you have your son ship under a false name?”’ he asked. Mr. Graham thought about that during three several gulps of boiling tea. _uxpeejency,” he growled at last. “Meaning what?” asked the captain, settling himself comfortably om a door- post. Graham laid aside his cup. “Well, I'll tell you, Cap’n Williams,” he said, slowly. ‘“‘Ah’m no a liar by taste, just the same’s the board o’ this line are no’ fools by profession. But in some respects, they are fools; an’ one o’ these respects is their dislike for havin’ relatives together in ships. Ah’m a God-fearin’ mon, Captain Williams; but on that very account, Ah’m also a just one. The Manchester bein’ laid up for repairs, my boy was in need o’ this job—an’ weel fitted for’t—as he proved twa days syne.” . One of the juniors chuckled. Graham stared him into decorum. “So,”’ ended the chief, “‘when he was to be robbed o’t by prejudice, I defended him by lyin’. The matter was no important.”’ “Why didn’t you keep the lie up?” “Because when he’d cut the bulwark loose, it became important. Ah’ll no’ go intae the philosophy o’t, Captain Williams. Ah’m a just mon, as I’ve telt ye; an’ justice demanded that, havin’ howked the boy through everythin’ from measles to smashed fmgers, an’ stayed in jobs for his sake that no bachelor or childless mon would ha’ stuck for a week, I should take what credit he could do me, an’ rejoice in the same.”’ Adventure Williams gave a short laugh. ‘“‘Well—heads I win, tails you lose,’ he sneered. ‘‘That’s a regular Scotch trick. You disown him except when he makes a hit, an’ then you step up for your share of the glory. Your God-fearin’ scales of justice have only got one pan.” Graham arose. “You misunderstand me, Captain,” he said grimly. ‘‘Ah’m indifferent to the lad only so long as it mak’s no difference. If IT tak’ pride in him when he deserves it, I tak’ responsibility for him when he doesna.”’ ‘““You mean that if he’d come into notice for stealing rivets, instead of cuttin’ through a couple of them, you’d have said you were his pa just the same?” demanded Williams, moving out into the alleyway. ‘Yes, you would, like os “Aye, ” said Robert Graham, Senior. Judging by the finality with which Mc- Whee reached for the bottle, this seemed to be the end of a chapter or something— an unsatisfactory end; an embarrassing end; a subtly menacing end, which left me ill at ease. “That word ‘Aye,’ ” the present writer remarked nervously, “seems to be much in use among engineers, he-he!”’ ‘““Aye,”’ said McWhee. en] WE NOW come to the City of Mom- ‘ah! basa’s return voyage from Bombay Ss to Barrow-in-Furness with cotton; week the second, and the third day. I apologize for this affected and inaccurate method of saying it was the seventeenth day out; but McWhee was so infernally Biblical that I find my style still influenced. He was also quite noticeably lit when we reached this part of the story, which is why some circumstances following are not as clearly defined as I should like. My im- pression is that the Mombasa had shipped a new stokehold bunch—all Lascars—in Bom- bay; had taken on two hundred tons of coal, carried in baskets by yelling Arabs, at Port Said, after the fourteen-hour run through the red and green buoys of the canal; and was making her way through the Mediter- ranean against a gale and a nasty short dead-sea. At four bells in the middle watch, the relieving helmsman had let the ship sheer two points off her course, and a sea had swept the head and foredeck clean of ventilators, awning stanchions, and even the great brass bell. CoMmichoool A) CO =