Adventure Magazine, December 10, 1924 — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

Stowed Away a moment the watchman thought of giving the alarm. But the man was carrying a sex- tant case, which marked him as an officer, and after getting aboard the ship he mounted the ladder toward the bridge. Quwimporte? Evidently only a mate ashore for a last hour at Marie’s against the cap- tain’s orders. _ If he had seen the figure dodge behind the whaleboat carried just aft of the bridge and watched him creep beneath the cover, Andy’s trouble might have begun much sooner, but as it was he was lying comfort- ably asleep in the bottom of the whaleboat when the Sedalia put to sea, dreaming of Captain Stivers’ chagrin when that surly officer should discover he was carrying Andy Prescott to Kennebunkport after all. As it happened, the discovery was de- layed longer than Andy expected or wished. All the next day while the ship tossed and squirmed across the Bay of Biscay he lay hidden. He could hear men passing on deck, and Stivers’ gruff voice barking or- ders on the bridge, but no one raised the lifeboat cover. Late in the second night Andy was so tired of his cramped quarters that he decided to slip out on deck and allow himself to be found, bawled out, put to work and given some hot food. Hardtack and water from a lifeboat’s breaker get un- palatable after three successive meals. With this plan in mind he crawled from under the cover on the outboard side of the boat, next the rail, and was about to slip under the stern on to the open. deck when he was halted by the footsteps of two men coming from aft. “T was figuring to look over the boats to- morrow morning, Captain,’’ one of the pair was explaining. ‘‘What’s the rush? ,, phey won’t be needed for a week anyways.’ Stivers grunted. “Suit yourself, Johansen. But being as I got to go out in this one myself, I’m taking no chances on empty breakers. A hundred miles in a lifeboat sounds easy while you’re on deck, huh? J’ve done it before. We earn every cent we get. Suppose it’s heavy weather off New York? We gotta abandon ship just the same. It would be better for you and me to jump overboard than bring this old wagon into port with this cargo. Instead of ten thousand, it’d be ten years we’d get!” “‘Aw, the big chance is over. and under hatches, ain’t it?” It’s loaded +9 “little thanks to you!” growled Stivers. ‘‘You dropped cases faster than a bunch of thirsty Portygees loading liquor. Suppose they’d broken open, huh, and the customs had a look inside and seen old rags where the manifests called for silk? Sup- pose they’d found out a cargo worth half a million on the ship’s papers really ain’t worth nothing? We was so close to jail I could hear the lock-step scufiling. I was going to bust your face——”’ “Aw, nothing happened,” cut in the mate In an aggrieved tone. “No, and nothing’s going to happen while I’m skipper, but you make my belly sour, making me do your work! It’s me on the gangway kicking off snooping friends of the owners! It’s me swearing to false manifests! It’s me that has got to prove how this ship comes to sink just out of port so the charterer can collect insurance on a cargo of silk that we never really loaded. The ship’s old, but she’s well found; the owners know it. All you do is open the bilge cocks, and you want to do it —— natural, too!’ Barratry! Behind the lifeboat Andy’s lips shaped the word, but he held his breath lest he should make a sound. Gone were all thoughts of allowing himself to be dis- covered. No wonder Stivers had refused to carry a passenger on a ship he intended to scuttle. How such a man had obtained command was a mystery, for there wasn’t a more uncompromisingly honest ship owner than bald-headed little Tobias Luce in the whole of New England. To lose the Sedalia under suspicious cir- cumstances would ruin the Luces, but never- theless it could be they who would be ac- cused of the barratry. The Luce Line was not making money. Cynical insurance men would accuse Tobias of scuttling the Sedalia for money enough to retire, not knowing, as Andy did, that the ambition of the old man’s life was to build up a successful line to bequeath his son and daughter. And while Tobias was being grilled on the witness stand, the suing charterer, owner of the cargo, woxld be howling to high heaven because of his “loss” on a cargo of silk worth thousands on the ship’s papers, but which was still lying hidden in a French warehouse, or already crossing on another ship. As captain, it did mean jail for Stivers if the falsity of the ship’s papers was ever CoMmiclbool< Wh) © 5}