Argosy All-Story Weekly — "Sea Marauders" — page 72: what you’re looking at

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

, 4 - Nits fast hd wie 28 te iit wagtti a wet i abst eh ty Bee SMR 494 books that he could read if he really wanted to—and he would stop being bored} Perhaps the most interesting feature of Gerald’s bungalow was a lean-to built against the south wall. Here was stacked his winter’s ammunition, cases and cases of it. There were cases of shotgun shells and rifle cartridges, but the bulk of the cases were filled with machine gun ammunition. Gerald had secured a machine gun from a rum runner who was retiring from the smuggling profession. It was a heavy, water-cooled affair, and Gerald loved it with the same ardor that a child con- fers upon a pop gun.” He dreamed of mounting its tripod in the bows of his speedboat, the. Squirt, and extermina- ting pirates with it. : ' The only objection to that was that there were no longer any pirates. You could not, by any stretch of the imagi- nation, consider the rum runners pi- rates. They were a peaceable, hard working lot. They minded their own business, which was to buy liquor in the Bahamas at from ten to twenty- eight dollars a case and to sell it in Florida at from forty to a hundred a case. Lacking pirates to shoot at, Gerald did the next best thing, which was to shoot at imaginary pirates. He con- structed with his own hands floating targets, each consisting of a rough raft with an empty keg at each corner, and upon this raft, standing straight into the air, was a stout wooden framework upon which he tacked such targets as pleased his fancy. ‘These were made of cardboard upon which he painted figures of men—piratical fellows—and sometimes the bow of a boat. The work of art he would tack upon the target frame, then tow the raft to a point some five hundred or a thousand yards offshore. Then he would mount the machine gun on the beach and fire in bursts at the bobbing target. It was great fun to sit behind the : machine gun, hold the trigger back, ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. ~ and see the water spit into the air as the bullets bored into it and finally found the target. This winter his tar- gets were all of a pleasing new design. He copied them with infinite pains from fashion magazines, such as Vogue, Harper's Bazar, the Delineator, and soon. They were all fashionable girls; ‘and it gave him immense satisfaction to'sit on the beach behindehis machine gun and riddle the pretty creatures with copper-jacketed bullets. The rat-tat-tat-tat-tat of the machine gun was soothing to his*nerves, and, moreover, he loved fine pieces of ma- chinery. The machine gun he con- sidered an admirably fine piece of ma- chinery. And he held in the same es- teem the powerful, delicately tooled five hundred horse power motor in his his mahogany speedboat, the Squirt, which, on rare evenings, when the sun- set breeze had gone, leaving the sea as unruffled as the surface of a billiard table, he would drive along at a forty- five-mile an hour clip. This motor he overhauled regularly, without outside assistance. He loved to scrape the carbon and grind the valves and take up the bearings. It gave him an excuse for wearing filthy old overalls, and filthy old overalls were a blessed relief after the fastidi- ous manner in which he had been com- pelled to dress himself in New York. His law books, when we come upon him, the third afternoon after his ar- rival, had as yet to be uncrated. And the chances were, they would still be uncrated when spring came. For the present, in any event, he wanted only to rest and to forget. womankid. He had spent the third day of his tenure on Kitikat in a number of de- lightful pursuits. He had swum. He chad fished for and caught several doughty barracuda. He had played with the machine gun awhile, and he had started to dismantle the motor of the Squirt for its winter’s business. He was on his wide veranda, happi- ly shaking up his rum cocktail while tn | 3 a , < a ) Se nigpDOOKS;. Eom — ile "Vr 2 went = ie fe ’ . a . - : vet — + =, tt at ~ ee Ser . : mags wees te 5 SS Oy MN oe. 4, =" 4 “ nf a: Pa Sees 43 ae = ES aed i oe tA - Ce Ph as ee eee ee . ” ae " Sy oy me