Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 4 — page 91: what you’re looking at

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

propellers half the time in reverse as she fought against being carried along with too dangerous a speed by the racing current. She was clumsy and noisy, the Nagaina, but very honest and resolute. The pilot had taken the bridge, and not being needed there Porter found time at last to question Vanaman more fully. With that mysteriously recrudescent individual, Jim Blair, still in tow, the doctor accom- panied Porter inte the privacy of the chart- house and there laid before him exactly as much as he deemed fit of events leading up to the abdarction. On the stranger side of the he touched not at all, merely stating that Mr. Robinson had in his possession a certain casket, of contents unknewn to him, Vana- man; that Mr. Robinson had many times referred to some person or persons, also un- known, who wished to deprive him of the said possession; that Mir. Robinson had the casket with him when abducted; and that the simplest assumption seemed. to be that the abductors and the supposititious claim- ers of Mr. Robinson’s property were. identi- cal. As he talked, it occurred to Vanaman that he was probably tellmg the truth. Since the moment when he found him- self left at the wharf, and his brain had cleared of that obsessing stupor, all the supernormal quality of the affair had seemed to grow steadily more questionable, fadmg to umnreality like the vumneertain memory of a dream—illusion—hallucina- tiom; three words that cover a multitude of otherwise inexplicable phenomena. Certainly the abductors of Robison and his. niece had been no empty fantoms, but flesh-and-blood men. His arm still ached famtly where the tall captain had gripped it. The boat in which Leilah and her uncle were carried off—that was most assuredly a real boat. Captain Porter had seen the real ship to which it had returned. Amd im good earnest, looking backward, old Robin- son might from many of his remarks have been on guard against enemies far more human and credible than the vague, mon- strous thing whose apparition haunted the green box. In fact, what is generally termed “ nat 6 Arcosy 561 ural commiom sense” informed the doctor very positively that while he and several other people had been to a certain extent victimized by a singular illusion, to-night’s event was—must be—of another order and belongmg to the category of purely human and material activities. Presently Mr. Crosby appeared in. the open doorway of the chart-house. ‘“ Black craft with a red delphin figure- head sighted at Bombay Hook little over an hour ago, sir,” he announced cheerfully. ‘““ Reported by the tug Jersey Queen. We just now got in touch with her.” “ Bombay Hook? Over an hour ago?”’ repeated Porter sharply. ‘The Jersey Queen’s dreammg! Or else there are two red dolphins cruising down ahead of us. Our boat can’t have made Bombay Hook even yet, much less am hour ago. It’s rank That lean wreck of a man, Jim Blair, seemed to rouse a trifle. “ Beg pardon, sir,” he interposed. “If yer knew Aim yer wouldn’t talk of nothing being impossible. That’s his ship, sir, with the dolphin to her bow. And she’s went down fast, of course, with the sre datge -tide..” Porter stared and the sailor stared back composedly; but there was. a look im his pale, bleak eyes that after a moment made the captam glance toward Vanaman with a questioning lift of the brows, while his lips silently formed a word. The doctor shook his head. “Tn not sure,” he murmured; then aloud: “ Blair, whom do you mean when you speak of ‘ him ’?” The sailor’s mouth widened in a sneer- ing, almost foolish grim. “Tf yer don’t already know, Dr. Vana- man, yer better off not to.” “ But I wish—I demand to know!” All the uncertainty, the unnatural fears and the maddening doubts that had made the last few days an unremitting torment surged as one great, urgent question. “ Blair,” he continued tensely, “‘ you are going to tell me every single thing you. know about this cursed business, and you are going to tell it now—quick!” : : “T ain’t got any objection,” conceded EO DOO SS (C(C)