Argosy All-Story Weekly, November 12, 1927 — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

WHEN THE S-12 WENT DOWN. in’ noise, and a pull that sort o’ gets a body by his innards. All I knows is I’m wonderin’ where cap- tain and me is, turnin’ and twistin’ like we’re doin’, and I gets a flash o’ thought that maybe we won’t catch up with the others, us bein’ over by the valves instead o’ under hatch where the others is grabbed up first, head-on. Then I’m stabbed, sort of, with a bit o’ daylight, which the sea shuts out prompt. I get it again, and there we are, me tan- gled all with the captain, my head in his stomach, him fillin’ with water account 0’ his mouth bein’ open. I tries to straighten out, but can’t, much, bein’ pretty done in. I’m wabbly, any- way, on the matter o’ daylight bein’ there so sudden and unexpected. And I get a crazy notion I’m hearin’ somebody yellin’: “ Hey, you, Slim!” ’Struth! And it sounds like Sandy. I’m just thinkin’ o’ it when I passes out, com- pletelike. When I knows anything, I’m lookin’ up from blankets on a deck to the funnels of a bally destroyer. Sandy, the blighter, pretty pale around the gills and on all fours, is lookin’ down at me. ‘“Ship’s discipline, able-bodied,” I re- proves him. “ Aye, aye, second cox’un,” he says, but he grins, and I bawls him out. He’s talkin’ back out o’ regulations when the destroyer’s commandin’ officer comes around a turret. He’s holdin’ up our lieu- tenant, who’s in dry flannels and walkin’ unsteady. We starts to get to our feet, and I see Sandy’s still shaky, too. “ Keep easy, lads,” the destroyer’s com- mander orders us, good humored. ‘“ You'll be shipshape in an hour or so. Your lieu- tenant wants a look at you.” We ain’t in any kind o’ shape for inspec- tion, though Sandy has lipped somebody out o’ a duffle suit, but the lieutenant ain’t so particular as he was. He mentions somethin’ about me stand- ing by the captain. It’s a lot 0’ eyewash he gives me, which I takes no account of, except when he says they’re gettin’ him around all right. It’s what he says to Sandy I listens to, hard-all. What I gathers is that the swab come up conscious and struck out for shore, which he would, bein’ in a hurry, but his legs shoved him t’other way. Of course, the gaffer claimed he saw the destroyer steam- in’ in from the horizon, and that he minded to turn around, give-all and make a try 0’ meetin’ it. 567 I calls it fishy, him bein’ halfway to shore . already, but after awhile what the destroy- er swabs took for a porpoise cuttin’ capers turned up to be Sandy’s legs with a couple 0’ kicks left in ’em and they hauls him aboard. “It’s what saved us, Bolton,” the lieuten- ant says. “If you hadn’t been nervy enough to stake-all on getting to the de- stroyer and bringing it up, we wouldn’t be here. Not a man-jack of us had strength to make shore.” More eyewash, but lieutenants can’t be corrected, so Sandy gets away with it. Any- how, the destroyer was there when we comes bobbin’ up unannounced, with Sandy spottin’ me from where he’s sittin’ pam- peredlike, on deck. III, WE don’t stop at the White Horse, ac- count o’ it. bein’ eight o’clock when the destroyer puts us ashore at Base, and some account o’ the White Horse bein’ a bit out o’ the way what with Sandy and me not navigatin’ so brisk on our feet. “Tt ‘ll be expired by now,” Sandy re- marks when we turns into the gate o’ his and Bella’s quarters. “It ‘ll be plumb mortified,” I agrees. “You go in first, Slim,” he gives me, which I thinks is astonishin’. “Me first, my eye!” I says. “ Head- on, able-bodied. Show her your legs. They'll be better for pettin’ now since we trimmed you up to be a torpedo.” He shakes his head, glum. ‘“‘ No good there, second cox’un. I measured ’em off, Ain’t squeezed an inch.” ‘“‘ What ‘ll we do?” I asks to that. “Chums, is all,” says he. : So we chums it and goes in together. — “ Hard-a-dive, you, Slim!” says Bella, Eomicvooks, (E@)