Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 146 No. 4 — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

3 ons e-Gastc party. We need chuck. sa . fat chance of that hull of yours any ghostly flits about this here Silks or no night, while me, with my < : figure, that’s a different yarn. _ “ Now listen and get me straight. I may . come back here considerable quicker than what I went, in which case there won’t be ‘no time for no fancy swan dives through no portholes, so be on the lookout, the quivuy-vivvy—get me? And if you hear any mad, sweet rush, and a healthy pound- ing on that there door, for the love of Mike open her up! » A quarter of an hour later Sparks slipped through the porthole in the starboard end of the bunk room. The shade of Ermest Montague de Beauprix went with him. There were no means of gauging how long they waited. It seemed hours. “ He'll be back soon now, Mary,” Rut- ledge whispered. “Yes, Peter.” She was standing very near to him in the darkness. “Don’t be afraid, Mary.” “I’m glad you are here, Peter.” “So am L[—hist!” Love’s blooming dream received a sharp nip in the bud. “Listen—hear that?” It sounded like the patter of running feet, like a gasp. Some one pounded on the door. _ Rutledge jumped for the door and flung it open. The beam from an electric torch flashed into his eyes, blinding him. A sharp blow from a stick sent the revolver clatter- ing from his hand. He smashed the flashlight to the deck in turn, and leaped backward for the spot where he had left his Mary. He found her, grabbed her, and bundled her with a shove into the bunk room. Then he wheeled to give pattle 3 in the dark; the battle he had dreamed of, visioned. ie wine of supreme sacrifice coursed in her memory when he would be gone, but the sound of it would linger, would ring forever in her ears. He promised himself that. And then he set to work. ) Every man, every inch of flesh him, would be his enemy. There would be no necessity for picking and choosing. So he waded in. What matter the odds? The greater, the more targets there would be to hit in this darkness, and the fewer the blank spaces. It was an orgy, a bacchanal of squnches, thumpings, smacking blows, of squeals, and grunts, and mighty bellowings—a su- perb windmill run amuck, with flaying arms that struck in piston crashes against a smother of milling, crushing bundles, chat- tering in high, falsetto shrieks. And some one switched on the lights. Rutledge, magnificently alone, a car- nage of mauled figures glaring at him, his Mary standing bravely in the doorway be- hind him, stood looking into a pair of eyes that glittered derisively in the gently smiling and quite unblemished face of Fang Wu. CHAPTER XXIV. PURSUIT. TREAKING through the waters at a nerve-jarring speed of thirty knots per hour, the U. S. S. Western State darted like an avenging arrow toward the theoreti- cal spot on the ocean’s broad expanse des- ignated as thirty-nine forty-six north, one seventy sixteen east. In the living room of the captain’s quar- ters, Clinton MacTavern gripped the arnis of the chair, 0 ee