The Argosy, Vol. 76, No. 3 — page 135: what you’re looking at

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

THE THING THAT WAS CAESAR’S. rocks they would become as hot as Tophet; so they motioned to Kow Lung to bring the water-cask. With Marjorie once ensconced among the rocks, the two white men went hastily back to the raft for what they could best carry. Oakes took the rifles and some of the loose “ raffle,’ as Hemingway called it, while the tall Englishman wrapped the ammunition and what food he could carry in a piece of canvas, and, slinging his coat over his shoulder, seized the ax and scrambled back among the rocks, where he stood and passed things up over the rocks to Kow Lung, who promptly laid them in safety and rejoined Oakes on the beach. They had to make two trips to get what little plunder they had from the beach up the rocks, and when they had had made the last trip they sank, ex- hausted, among the stones that at even that early hour had become almost unbearably hot. Raising himself on his hands, Oakes saw the two sampans beach about four hundred yards below them. He drew one of the rifles to him and, after ex- amining the magazine, threw -back the bolt, clicked a cartridge into the chamber, and set the sight for four hundred yards. “I believe I could do it from here,” he muttered as he settled himself com- fortably behind the rifle-butt; “ and yet if there is any chance, even the remotest, of settling the matter without a fight, we must doit. We have Mar- jorie to look after. It must be a battle of diplomacy, and until that fails— Kow Lung,” he _ broke in, “keep your head below the top of the rocks. They can pick you off like clams at low tide if you stick your gourd up like that—what?’”’ “No glood makee flight—Chinee- man can come too quai-quai. Got many men. Maybe so you wantchee makee talkee Kow Lung ash China- man what him say. Hey?” Oakes nodded assent, and Kow 605 Lung: sneaked down the narrow path to the edge of the cover, behind which he carefully secreted himself while he hailed the advancing sampan crews in a shrill, piercing voice. They halted and a raucous voice an- swered him. Kow Lung howled to Oakes in a singsong voice. “ Him Chinee claptain makee talkee. Him say this flight no good pidgin business. Him no wantchee kill Yung- gwaizai—foreign devils. Him say meb- bee some you give Chinee mans all you got him lettee you go.” “We haven’t got anything but— No! I'll be hanged if I’m going to tell him what we've got,” he growled to Hemingway. “Wait a bit.” It was Hemingway who spoke. “ We may be able to buy them off, Jim. God knows I hate to do it; but we have the stuff to buy them off with in those stones that I found in Peking. What do you say? shall we offer them a part of them to let us alone? Personally I hate to give it to them, but I think we must do it—for—for Marjorie. Suppose we try it, anyhow? ” “If you were to offer them the whole lot of the jewels and everything’ else that we have in the world,” said Oakes grimly, “you can’t buy them off, and you know it as well and better than I do. “Tf you offer them a part of what we have, they will immediately assume that we are keeping back the more valuable part. They will not keep their promises. “Of course, you know these coast people better than I do, old man—we might offer them a ring or two. That will look as if we had taken them off our fingers for a ransom. Yes; let’s do that. Try them with a couple. of rings, Hemingway.” Hemingway nodded acquiescence and crawled off to the place where he had laid his coat on top of the canvas that held their little store of ammuni- tion and provisions. Oakes was vague- ly aware that his friend was tossing COMicdoo S CO@