Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 107: what you’re looking at

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

fi 4 i Ue) | f, i By JOHN CHARLES BEECHAM When hate answers hate, where shall hate end ?—Buddha. The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred is in some degree a slave.—George Washington. HE passenger list of the coast packet Batavier, en route from Batavia, Java, to North Sumatran ports, was a mixed one. That was inevitable in a corner of the world where men of every degree of shade and color rub elbows in pursuit of the elusive dollar. On the upper deck basked the whites, with Mongolians of wealth, and Arabs and Hindus of ap- proved lineage; below, the mongrel tribes and races of Asia and Malaysia herded. They crammed the lower deck from bow to stern, a polyglot assortment of smelly humanity, eating, sleeping, dicing and reeking in the coffin length of deck per individual which each had preémpted on coming aboard. It is a six-day run from Batavia to Pidié on the Batavier. Swift limers make the voyage in three days, and tramp freighters in from four to five days; but the Batavier, quaint, superannuated relic of the days when sail turned up its nose at steam, wheezed listlessly along the margin of sun- baked flats at a scant eight miles an hour. Her engineer was a genius, otherwise he would never have coaxed the service out of her worn-out boilers and machinery that he did. Each voyage would be the last, master and chief of the fire room lugu- briously assured each other whenever they left port, but none of this leaked out to the passengers, whatever they may have sus- pected. Since the departure from Batavia, A. Puddlewhit had spent much of his time between decks. It was his custom to vanish below immediately after breakfast, not to reappear until the silvery tinkle of a Chi- nese gong proclaimed the rice hour. Ona ‘small ship such things are noticed. Pud- 741 oO CORMIC KOOKS, CO