Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 11, 1925 — page 157: what you’re looking at

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

PETERSON PRIDE. short bow of her fish boat, the children from Ottowa Island were crowding through the hatch into the engine compartment. The one boy remained. Minna noticed dully that he had tied a rag around his left arm. He sawed with his jack-knife till the bow line snapped. The Kingfisher plunged, and thundered once more into the planks of the mail boat, while a mighty, choking heat scorched Minna Peterson’s face. She understood. _. “Help you, mister?” the small boy for- ward cried. “Go below!” Minna answered him. « She screamed Nels’s name again. His boat was flame from bow to rudder there in front of her eyes. Nels Nielson had died. He had died afloat, on duty. Well, worse could happen! She heard herself laugh, and was shocked at the sound. Was she going mad? She straightened her knees and kicked over the tiller. In a close, reckless circle she drove her boat around and around the blazing craft. It was settling lower. There was nothing she could do. It an- gered her, this helplessIness. The mail boat listed, with a lurch to starboard; flung _ about senselessly, like a torch in the hands of a drunken juggler. Minna Peterson laughed out loud again and thought of the snoring Robin. This time she knew she was mad. Why should she laugh? Find anything brave, anything splendid in this wicked, blazing light? How could she dare see in its crim- son plume a brief, floating monument to Nels Nielson and to all the thousand men before him wno had died by fire at sea? Well, Robin Peterson had done that to her pride. Made her mad. The mail boat listed another degree and -spun in a complete circle. With no warn- ing it dipped its bow under a black wave and sank. Its going was an anticlimax. Sudden darkness, wind, rain, an eddy of water. That was all. Minna turned the bow of her own boat shoreward. She saw the sudden flare of a coast guard patrol on Ottowa Island. The coast guard was too late! _ The breakwater light cast a listless glow 7 <% = — > a at oe a ad ae ok ao oll ‘through the dwindling rain at Cathead. Minna Peterson steered toward it, her eyes fixed, her mind uneasy with astounding | thoughts. She edged past the broken piling at the harbor mouth, swung to the left and thumped alongside the fishermen’s wharf. The water was quiet here. trap, reached down with tired, cold fingers and flung off the switch. The engine coughed. Minna Peterson threw a pair of half hitches over a piece of cedar piling and stepped ashore. “Go up there,” she bade the children who tumbled out of the hatch, ‘‘ up there where you see the lights and find Casper Clause, Tell him you have to get home ‘fore your folks go crazy. Tell him what happened. Tell him Robin Peterson went out alone and saved you.” She unlocked the fish shanty and slammed the door behind her. “So youre awake!” she chided. Robin Peterson sat up dully on his pile of unboiled nets. “What you doin’-in my boots, Minna?” he wanted to know. Minna Peterson took off the boots and threw them on the floor beside sou’wester and slicker. She faced her husband. “T ain’t had your. boots. There they are, on the floor. There’s your oilskins, just where you threw ’em. You’re drunk, Robin Peterson. And Nels Nielson’s dead. Drownded. But do you know what?” She spoke each word grimly. ‘“ You took out the boat, Robin Peterson. Your own boat, the Kingfisher. And you got ten kids off the mail boat, and you brought ’em in here. Understand that? You got ten kids, all but Nels, and the mail boat burned.” “T did not,” said Robin. “Ten kids,’”’ Minna Peterson resented: ‘“‘ Of course, you did it drunk! You didn’t know you were out! You're always drunk. Cathead looks for that. Maybe now I’ve give ’em something else to look for in you! They'll believe in you awhile maybe, sav- in’ a boatload of kids. I’ve give you a push, Robin Peterson!” She ran out of the shanty in her be- draggled white dress and slammed the door a second time behind her. She lifted the — COI ~. 4 Se ae Gee ee ae *