Ainslee's Magazine, February 1913 — page 79: what you’re looking at

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

THE SHANGHAIED CHERUB the Cherub’s frock, he smiled and waved a brown-paper parcel. “She shall have all the new frocks she wants,” he said. “I’ve brought a bunch to try on before we sail.” The guests pricked up their ears. “I’m afraid we’ve got to leave you rather suddenly, Tom,” explained the captain, taking his seat at the table. “The Union Transport people have of- fered me the Chicola, and I’ve about decided to take her.” He looked proudly round the table, and in face of that gleam in the eye and tilt of the head that spoke of a lifetime in command of men, there was not a shadow of a smile at the ingenu- ous pretense that a moment’s consid- eration of the offer had been possible to him. Joshua Nixon was again captain by something more than courtesy, and there was not a sailorman among them who was not unaffectedly glad. It was not an enviable task to land a rough- necked cargo like the Chicola’s, of course. But beggars and aged master mariners cannot be choosers. The interest in the Cherub had be- come acute. Mrs. Cordoba was called in as advisory cxpert on the frocks, and the assembly, to a man, remained to sit around, and smoke after-dinner pipes, and discuss the garments with a gravity as supreme as that with which the Cherub tried them on. Suddenly Cap- tain Nixon answered their unspoken questions. “One thing I’m glad to get the Chi- cola for,” he said, “is that it will take me right back to Bridgehaven. I’ve been trying to get back there, so I can find the Cherub’s father. I guess he must have pretty well given her up for lost.” “T thought she warn’t your’n, some- how, said Mrs. Cordoba. “She’s a pretty child—I dare say her poor mother is crying her eyes out for her.” “IT don’t know,” said the captain un- comfortably. “From what I can make out, she hasn't got any mother to cry for her. All I know for certain is that I was working out through the Nar- rows from Bridgehaven, in the old Mary E, Leigh last spring, and ran 69 down a gasoline launch. We got out a boat and picked up the Cherub and a couple of waterside roughnecks, who said they were taking her home. The kid did nothing but cry for her father, and I couldn’t get much out of her, so I decided to take them along to Balti- more. The strike had delayed us too much to put back. At Baltimore we had no sooner tied up than the two roughnecks disappeared, so I sent full particulars to the harbor master at Bridgehaven.” “Why you not give da kid to da polis?” queried Tamale Tom. “T don’t trust them,” replied Joshua Nixon, shaking his head with the sea- man’s inbred suspicion of all dry-land authority. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I mean to stick to the kid myself till I find some one with a better right. They’d probably fool away six months and find out nothing, and then send her to an orphan asylum. From what she says, her father lives in a house with a garden to it, and she has a whole raft of teddy bears to keep her company. It ain’t much to go on, but I’m hoping the harbor master will have found out something. He’s a personal friend of mine.” “Uncle Josh found me in the water,” interposed the Cherub, with the air of illuminating the discussion. ‘Then she twisted round in a delightfully feminine effort to inspect the fall of her skirts. “What's her name?” suddenly in- quired the carpenter from Bridgehaven. “Doris Mills, as near as I can make out,” said the captain. The man from Bridgehaven brought his gnarled fist down upon the table with a resounding thud. “Then, begging your pardon, you’re right up against it, Captain Nixon!” he cried hoarsely. “That. kid’s: the daughter of the man that bought up the Union Transport last year, and there’s three men in jail now for shanghaing her to make him come to terms with the strikers. And you’ve had her at sea all the time, and her father chasing after you like he was crazy!” The man from Bridgehaven smote the table anew and stared round him (COLA MUCE v.OoOK (E@)