Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

The War Cats of Dugan O’Day in three languages and swear in two. Beautiful Spanish, bastard French, and English with a trace of Irish phrasing and a bit of the talk of the seas. Eventually he learned to swear in Spanish, but never was he adept at it. Four Cubans turned instantly toward him; four Cubans froze into statues at the sight of the two guns in his hands. “Catfish and gulls,” said Dugan, “sight carrion no more quickly than you gentle- men of Cuba sight salvage.” And directly to the captain he said, ‘‘I am disconsolate, your grace, that I can not invite you to Iuncheon, and that you must go so soon.” The captain awoke to a speech, but he kept his hands well away from the bare knife whose handle protruded from the waist band of his unbelted trousers. “We shall lunch, sefior, aboard my smack—after the line is fast.’”’ And he grinned with little show of fear. ‘““Mongrel curs!’’ cried Dugan, whose temper was fast going and whose Spanish was becoming better, “unnamed whelps of many fathers and vile mothers, get off my ship!” Now, it is true that Cubans are more wont to make love than marriage, but no man likes to be told his parents were so for- getful. From the shelter of the smack’s low galley came a slithering ray of light; Dugan heard the whistle of the knife even as its heavy hilt struck his right elbow. Numbed for the moment, the pistol fell from his fingers—and he saw fish knives appear as if by magic in the hands of the four Cubans below him. The fat captain’s arm went back, and the gun in Dugan’s left hand crashed twice. A spot of red seemed to leap from nowhere to fix itself on the Cuban’s broad wrist. Lucky, very lucky, that one shot should have taken effect. Few men shoot well with both hands—and Dugan shot well with neither. Then from the deck of the smack came whirling a heavy catfish club, a lead-loaded bit of black mangrove two feet long, kept to deal with sea cats, whose savage teeth and stinging feelers make them unpleasant things to handle. Dully the club thudded agaist the spokes of the wheel, having missed Dugan’s head by inches. Even as he shifted his eyes from the four Cubans below him: to look for the one ‘3 aboard the smack came another club, strik- ing the pistol from his hand. As if the fall of the weapon to the deck had been a signal, the Cubans surged up to the narrow companionway, with the un- armed captain in the lead. Dugan’s left hand tingled, his right arm was still dull and heavy from the sharp blow on the elbow bone. Grimly he tugged at the pistol still in his waist band, but it had settled down inside his trousers and his fingers could not seem to close hard enough to draw it out. At the very bottom of the ’way bunched: the Cubans, hesitating, and the fat man set one foot on the first iron step. Very ter- rible looked Dugan O’Day, raw-boned man of iron musele, with his bandaged head held high and his mouth thrown far open to emit a cry of rage. Grimly he towered over them. For- gotten now was the pistol, and his great hands opened and closed as if they had never known numbness. Another club whirled by him, so close this time that he felt the little breeze of it. Even as he dodged the Blackfish yawed sullenly so that a foot of water welled over her waist and poured on the low deck of the smack. And Dugan O’Day staggered awk- maruly at the edge of the poop above the ay. Like the Cubans, he grasped for a hand hold, but he grasped too late. Summon- ing all his strength and poise, he was able only to steady himself long enough to spring rather than fall, selecting the fat captain for his landing place. Handicapped by his wounded wrist in meeting the roll of the Blackfish and the surge of water which followed it, the Cuban had lunged blindly for a grip on the com- panionway railing. He missed, and the grotesquely outspread arms and legs of the leaping madman—for so Dugan must have appeared to the Cubans—enveloped him. The heavy body of the mate crashed him down to the deck and did not rise. Dugan felt not even the slightest jar from the leap. Hardly had he ceased fall- ing when he gathered his muscles and sprang for the smallest of the Cubans, a tiny fellow with a hideously pock-marked face. Very little, he was, weighing surely not more than a hundred pounds. He had lost his knife in the excitement of the wash of water; he was so terror stricken that he could not even dodge when COMiIcloOoe (©