Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 82: what you’re looking at

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

64 The strange name, the strange odor, in- stead of hominy, fanned Leep’s peevishness. “Aw,” he snarled, “ain’t you got some fried hominy?” “Hominy!” popped the dried-up wisp. “Boy, y’re from Arkingsaw.”’ Leep’s heart jumped with joy. ““You’re American!” he cried. “T ain’t.” “Come off!” “T ain’t! I was. Bornded in the U. S. Name’s Smith. But I done brushed the dust o’ that land off the seat of me pants forever.”’ The Missourian gaped in amazement at such disloyalty. Smith, as he named him- self, spat disdainfully. at a port hole by his elbow. But the hole was closed with a © bolted steel plate and the amber juice ran down. The blunder increased his wasp- ishness. He wiped off the stain with his dishcloth and barked out at Leep: “Don’t ye ever say U. S. to me again. It’s been took over by the middle classes and us extreme rich and poor ain’t got no opporchunities left. Don’t ever say U. S. to me again; d’ye hear?” He was trembling in his wrath, a bitter, shaken old reed, and he took up a butcher knife and cuddled it so lovingly that Leep subsided behind his bowl of goulash, for- getting all else at the first taste. BUT there were too many new ‘things for him to keep quiet long. m™ When the cook set out a cup of coffee Leep put a confidential inquiry. “Say, what’s all the gang?” Smith sniffed. “This guy that hired me,” Leep persisted, “what does he want me for? Who is he?” Some of the men behind Leep snickered, and the cook broke out vehemently. “You long, hungry, freckled greenhorn, that guy’s Zaunich, king o’ the rum pirates of Puget Sound. And this is his boat. The Sea Horse. Fastest thing on the Pa- cific coast. Built o’ steel. Turns U. S. machine-gun bullets. And right now Zu- anich is out there pilotin’ her in the wake of a slow rum-runner that he’ll hijack and sink when he hits U. S. waters. That’s who this guy is.’ Leep pondered this a moment while the smooth, oiled clanking of the engine came through the bulkhead; then he blurted out the thought uppermost in his mind. Adventure ‘And him a foreigner,” he said. Instantly a grim, bony-faced, big-fisted man stood up and whirled the Missourian around. “What’s being foreign got to do wit’ it?’ he demanded resentfully. To Leep it had plenty to do with it. From A-B-C days he had been nurtured on the milk that no alien would dare defy the sovreignty of the United States and that no alien was in any sense superior to an American; yet here was a foreign fellow called king of the rum pirates, therefore by inference better than any American pirate; and who was smuggling into the United States, using a bullet-proof boat to defy the law, and who was hiring Ameti- cans to work for him in a menial capacity. Resistance gathered in Leep. The bony-faced fellow flung out again: “What yousay about foreign men? Hey?” Leep remained insolently silent. “You weak-knee Yank!’’ blared the man, gripping the lapels of Leep’s old wet over- coat. ‘‘You speak me.”’ “Take your hands off,” ordered Leep throatily. “I’m an American.” Another titter went through the crowd. Bony-Face drew back, deliberately pre- paring to strike, when the door at the head of the little stairway down into the cabin opened and the pirate Zuanish stood there. “Vat’s dis?” he growled. “Vike, take de wheel.”’ Bony-Face obediently turned away from the American. Zuanich came down. The two talked a minute in a foreign tongue; then Zuanich came forward and stuck his thick face up to Leep’s, as nearly as he could reach, and broke out abruptly: “You want know som’t’ing, hey? Who’s de guy dat hired you, hey? Me, Zuanich, a foreigner! Me, king o’ de hijackers. I hired you. Me who don’t take no lip from nobody. You like to ask some more before I knock you to sleep?” Leeper’s inwards contracted painfully. The gulped food, the stinking close cabin, the movement of the boat on the rough water and the violent men were having a bad physical and mental effect on him. He acutely did not wish to be struck. So he fenced. He blurted out an attempt at a jovial suggestion. “Yuh might gimme a knock-down to your friends here, Zuanich, seein’ as we re all in the same boat.” GOMIGIOO (C©