Argosy All-Story Weekly — "Sea Marauders" — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

514 ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. dering about the girl he was engaged to. Eulalie Maytime! Eulalie May- time, Susan supposed, must be clever, smart, modern, gay—all the things that Gerald liked and Susan lacked. It made Susan a little sick-and more than a little furious to realize that she had devoted her life to vain pursuits. Her interest had been applied to seri- ous things, and men—the kind of men she could love—were not interested in serious things. Think of it—she couldn’t even dance! What chance had she to win a desirable man like Gerald? Her thoughts flitted over the day they had spent together. It had been the most delightful day of her life. Always the menace of him. Always that dangerous, frightening, exciting look in his electric-blue eyes. The very touch of his hand excited her. Why hadn’t she let him kiss her when she had looked up at the moon? Jumbled impressions trooped through her tired brain. His shoul- ders. His hands. What strong, broad, beautiful shoulders he had! What powerful, expressive hands! She could thrill again at the fury in him that the man in the village store had fanned. Only her quickness had averted a fight. He would have fought because of a slur upon her! A faint, faint rumbling, far, far away, attracted her. Her heart leaped. If another thunderstorm would only strike Kitikat Key. Then she could fly to his comforting arms. But the rumbling was not repeated. The dis- tant thunder rumbled off and away beyond earshot. Her last thought before sleep came was: If he would only stop loving that irl! , Z Meanwhile, in the living room, a Verdun in miniature was being fought between Gerald and the hungry mos- quitoes. Slap. Slap. Slap He would fall off to sleep, only to be jerked back to wakefulness by a whine at his ear or a pinprick on his cheek. But finally he dozed off and it was daylight when a ea Ee ee rien ok = oe ee ee ay oP "= &. S 2 A Ng Pe, alt tds ER. ott ee ee he awoke, with Susan standing over him in the gray bathrobe, as she had stood over him yesterday. Once again they swam to the red buoy. Once again Susan instructed him in the proper use of the trudgeon stroke. Later she held his mind to the slippery problems of admiralty law. Still later they worked on the engine of the Squirt. They were having lunch when the incident occurred which brought the events of the past two days into sharp focus. Gerald was pouring cream into his coffee and looking at Susan. “We can put the Squirt into the water,” he said. ‘“‘ The sea is smooth enough for a test run.” ‘““T want to take up the slack in that timing chain,” said Susan. “And I think the distributor points had better be checked over.”’ “IT want to finish calking up the cat- boat,” said Gerald. . The second day of Susan, he was finding, was not nearly so difficult as the first day. She was, from Gerald’s point of view, simply a person from an unfamiliar world. ‘The girls he had known were either time killers or pace makers. They wanted you to entertain them. They were steppers. All the girls of to-day were steppers, and Gerald was finding a measure of relief—refreshing relief—in a girl who was interested in swimming prop- erly, in making marine engines run properly. Susan had sworn she would get five miles an hour more out of the Squirt than ever before. And in mak- ing something of her mind other than a receptacle for the latest wisecracks and behind-the-hand stories. She had kindled in him a real enthusiasm for his legal study. How he was going to miss this girl! He only hoped that Uncle Jethro would put off returning for a long, long time.. “Look here,” he said, suddenly, as an idea occurred to him, “ you told me that Uncle Jéthro had put you off here, — San tay 5 “si a Pile + Se nal <