Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 11, 1925 — page 156: what you’re looking at

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

Bee Jind 35 PaCS Viti Teh Paar et sh PEL wt iy 310 * Robin, honey! They’s a boat on fire! God, Robin, Robin, wake up!” Robin Peterson snored ‘steadily. His slicker and sou’wester’ lay heaped beside him. His muddy boots sprawled near his bare feet. The lamp smoked in the rising wind. It flickered and went out. In its last gust Minna Peterson gave a horrified look at her motionless husband. Then she pushed herself up, kicked off her own wet shoes and slipped into his boots. “They’s a fire, Robin!” she begged. “Please, please, Robin! Come along with me!” She was in the sou’wester’ and slicker. “Once she turned, calling again. Robin did not answer. Minna rolled shut the door, snapped the padlock, jerked out the key. It was dark in the cabin of the King- fisher. With shaking fingers she found the fuel valve and switched on the spark. She dropped the priming cup twice. Then it rattled successfully against the cylinder petcocks and she tried her strength on the flywheel. Robin did that generally. With a hard jerk she turned it over. Her arms had steadied when she cast off the lines. On the small deck aft, with the tiller between her feet, she leaned her el- bows, fisherman fashion, upon the roof of the cabin, and watched the breakwater light swing past. The open lake set her boat to capering idiotically. Only once she glanced shore- ward. ‘The lights of the village were fall- ing away. The storm had drenched out completely the festive flares in the bowery. Already high spray dimmed the break- ‘water lamp. The flame ahead shone brighter. V. MINNA had watched two boats burn at sea in her life. Each time, drugged with sleep, she had run down to the shore in the deep of night and stood by with the other women, paralyzed in her soul by that one elemental fear common to every sailor ‘and woodsman. Fire. The precarious antics of small vessels in heavy seas were nothing. One could manipulate those. But what could any one, no matter how brave, ‘do with fire? ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. This was gasoline consuming the mail boat. Out of the snubby bow decking where the petrol tank was built, braids of purple flame shot up into the empty, wet sky and reaching aft, chewed ragged vents in the cabin roof. Their roar outplayed the patter of rain. Minna listened. She could not hear the children. But in another moment she saw them. They were crowded at the stern, a close, terrorized, uncountable mass of heads and arms. Minna swung the tiller over and pointed into the wind. For the first time since she put on Robin’s boots and left him snoring on the floor, she felt a cold satisfaction in her own kind. These were not common children. They were children of the lake, as she was herself; sons and daughters of coastguard surfmen, of light tenders and fishermen. They might scream and cry at fire, but they would know how to get into her boat. She maneuvered the Kingfisher in an in- cautious circle and nosed its bow amidship into Nels Nielson’s white launch. A small boy with iong,.thin legs leaped into the air as the two crafts touched and dropped clawing upon the deck of the fishboat. “One!” said Minna Peterson through her teeth. Two girls tried it next. The smaller of them slipped, hung precariously overside and the boy yanked her back. “Three!” Minna counted. The force of the wind, the pressure of the fish boat’s propeller, flung the burn- ing launch away for a moment. Minna gasped, and again felt her cold satisfac- tion. The first small boy, with a twist of his wrist, had thrown her bow line into the huddle of children. Some one caught it. Once more her boat crawled within reach. *“‘ Six!” Minna Peterson cried. She leaned forward on her elbows. ‘‘ Seven! Ten!” She waited. Where was Nels Niel- son? Big stupid! Would he monkey all night below? “Nels!” she screamed. “ Nels!” A queer terror possessed her. She screamed again, over and over, till her shout was a whisper that the wind sucked up. No one answered, no one at all. | Fire spurted out of the ports. On the comicboo “= - A oo . ae wi one — 2 Sa ee it ro * “ - é a a. ~