The Argosy, Vol. 76, No. 3 — page 184: what you’re looking at

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

654 rage from them, and I'll do it, orders or no orders.” “Dr. Francis Ljiebler,” said Fan- cher calmly, “ has enunciated the prin- ciple that, no matter what their atroci- ties may be, retaliation upon savages is not justified. They must be han- dled with firmness, kindness, and jus- tice. The superior mind of the white man must be called upon to do what his superior fighting powers can never accomplish.” “And I enunciate the principle,” roared the infuriated colonel, “ that, after the next one of my people is cut to red shreds by one of these opium- befuddled hellions, there'll be open season on Moros until a treaty is made that will stand and protect. I'll hear no more, Captain Fancher.” “Tt’ll never do, sir,” said Fancher sincerely. “I hope you won’t so harm yourself. That’s why I spoke.” On his seventh birthday some one gave little Buzzy Fancher a copy of “Treasure Island.” Sadly and re- proachfully Chief Joseph and a host of lesser blanketed and befeathered fig- ures folded their tents and departed from the heart of the little boy’s af- fections, to give place to the sinister shapes of Black Dog and Billy Bones and Long John Silver. Poor Conroy was reduced from the vanity of personal narrative to la- boriously spelling out the fascinatingly outlined log of the Hispaniola. The ad- jutant donated an old campaign-hat, pinned up on one side with a skull-and- bones pin; the troop saddler was called into service to fashion a broad-buckled. belt, pistols, and cutlases of wood, and Conroy, with the stub of a pencil, tat- tooed lugubrious legends on the field of Buzzy’s blue-veined little arm. The Seven Seas hold no better place than Yolo in which to be a pirate. Under the crumbling bastions of the old Spanish fortifications that wall the American town from the Moro quar- ters are damp dungeons where real pirates have languished. THE .ARGOSY. From the watch-tower in the citadel bearded Castilians, in clanking armor, have scanned the azure waters beyond the snowy beach of the tropical bay for the low and rakish craft of the sea- rovers against whom the ocean-wall across the straits was built. In that very tower Buzzy used to sit and watch the sea-shell road that stretches away from the portcullis and the gate through a double row of royal palms, and up, climbing and twisting, here a snowy slash ‘on the hillsides, there a diminishing ribbon of pearls, until at last, only a tiny silver thread, it disappears into the mystery of those jungle-covered hills where very real bandits, brandishing wondrous weap- ons and garbed in the silken splendor of the Arabian Nights, still charged red-handed to the foray. That road beckoned and promised and called. One day Buzzy tiptoed through the cool living-room of Fancher’s quarters to reconnoiter the patio where his fa- ther worked at papers and his mother took her sewing. “ Clack—clack—clack—clack.”’ That was his daddy’s mad walk across the tiles; so Buzzy waited and finally heard his mother’s low, con- soling murmur and his father’s tones, troubled and\complaining. “I’m sorry, Daisy; I’d do anything to save Conroy, and I don’t want to Supersede the colonel; but I warned Conroy. Worse than that: I threat- ened him. I gave him his chance, and he wouldn’t take it. “ And now he’s gone again. You can’t permit the old men to go on these debauches—that’s just what they are —and still expect the recruits to toe the mark. “As for the colonel’s pig-headed adherence to an outworn policy of vin- dictiveness and brutality, that’s the general’s affair, not mine.” It was no place for pirates; and Buzzy, troubled, went off to the main gate to see Sergeant Whalen, who was on guard that day, and to ask what his ‘daddy meant about Conroy. COMicdoo S CO@