Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 146 No. 4 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

ae deafening detonation. The Yung Swei shivered, surged a bit to port then steadied down. CHAPTER XXII. FLIGHT. VERY potent sense of menace in the A voice of Fang Wu as he said: “ Look behind you!” checked the three of them from leaping upon him in an aveng- ing mass and snuffing him out on the spot. Hendriks, Harris and MacDonald turned about. Each one of them was prepared for a bad shock; had steeled himself for a new and disastrous danger—some trap. There was absolutely nothing there. The blank bulkhead stared them harm- lessy in the face. They heard a scurry, the click of a latch, the turning of a key in the door, and Fang Wu was gone. They were securely locked up in the captain’s quarters. A mocking voice from the other side of the closed door said to them, quite dis- tinctly: “As you break down the door, gentlemen, or attempt any exit, in an un- dignified fashion, from the portholes, you will be shot down like dogs. I preferred having it done that way than while I was personally in the cabin with you. It is so much safer—for me. “Tt is also so very much more conven- ient to have all the officers imprisoned to- gether than at the head of their men, where they belong. Oh, and Captain Hendriks, I am sure that Miss MacTavern will be highly amused when she learns that you mistook the voice of one of your former mess boys, as he screamed so excellently through one of the open ports in your sleeping quarters, for her own rather charm- ing, certainly more charming, voice. “T bid you good-by, gentlemen. Perhaps we shall meet again. The Infinite is so in- definite. I hope you will be well accli- mated by the time when I shall arrive to join you there.” The voice trailed off into silence. -_ “God strike you pink!” said MacDonald Pe ‘Harris Bie Bees at the closed ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. ae = * eo he “Mess boy! Mess boy!” Harris bled feebly. He became an apostate 6 ian veritable Hierophant of Heresiarchs, to say the very least. Then they attacked the door. For Har- ris, it was a symbollic rampage of icono- clasm. It was a stout door, a good oaken door, and their efforts made little impression upon it. They flung themselves repeatedly against it. It gave a little each time—but not enough. No one mentioned the advisableness of exiting via one of the ports. There was something rather magnificent about burst- ing through a door, in full war cry and a brandishing of weapons, even if one were shot down for it. But to be popped at when sliding out of a porthole, in the man- ner with which it was necessary to slide out of a porthole, no! Even heroism has its limits. Fang Wu rapidly descended to the deck. There was no one about. The men, clutch- ing their fire axes and slice bars, were all patiently huddled together in the starboard alleyway. Harris had left them there with rigid instructions not to budge a nose until he returned to them. He had been so definite as to what not to do, and so vague as to what would happen to them if they did it, that he had rooted the lot of them to the spot. Fang Wu gained the boat deck aft. He made a sign to a yellow face that peered up at him from number three hatch. A moment or two later Miss MacTavern and the seven remaining members of the steward’s department stood on the boat deck beside him. Placing Miss MacTavern in one of the lifeboats, they lowered it, with much expedition and efficiency, over the side, and slid down the tackles into it as it struck the water. They cast off, shipped the oars, and were well away and heading for the Yung Swei as Hendriks, Harris and MacDonald burst out on deck. Fang Wu waved politely at them. MacDonald grabbed the captain’s rifle,” with which he had made such a brilliant —