Argosy All-Story Weekly, November 13, 1920 — page 101: what you’re looking at

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

THE MYSTERIOUS QUEST. brought from his lps, the waterside be- came alive with sounds. | There was no mistaking those mingle noises. The mutineers were launching the two yawls. ‘“They’ve tapped the water cask,’ the skipper shouted. ~ So cleverly had they hidden the sounds of leakage after withdrawing the plug, by heaping sand before the vent, that the precious fluid had been pouring out for all of the last half-hour, while they were busy at their stealthy task between the casks and the yawls. And now the thump of the oar-locks came to tell us how they were rowing away. Ross was the one to announce the con- summation of the moment’s news. ‘ Them boxes!” he cried. The whole heap had vanished. | CHAPTER XIX. LEWIS’S LAST LOOK. HAVE tried my best in this tale to avoid all those technicalities of my trade,’ which still is following the sea, although my ventures are of a different nature now than they were at the time when these things took place; but there are some matters pertaining to the deep water and the ships which sail beyond sight of land, which no landsman would readily understand unless they were explained to -him. Here I must pause to recall the char- acter of our foremast hands. These fellows were the dregs of San Francisco’s city front whom drink and hard usage had debased to the lowest level. The skipper struck a light, and that in itself brought a feeling of huge relief. We paid dearly for it, but the sneaking about in the darkness and the holding of our breaths was done away with. We ap- praised the extent of the catastrophe, and aS we appraised, we made our reckoning on how it had been brought about. While we were lying there guarding the lives of ourselves and our passengers, Lewis had improved his opportunity. He had led his three companions from the beach to the cache, two round trips in all, and 379 they had managed to carry away all ten of the leaden boxes. Some one must have done a good deal of sweating for a single box was a goodly load, and the thieves had been obliged to bear them off on hands and knees. The height of the heap of ship’s stores had helped to conceal their move- ments and had covered the depletion of the smaller pile. It had~ been: simple enough, now that we knew what had hap- pened. 3 They had not taken any food. At first this puzzled me, but the skipper reminded me that plenty of provisions were left aboard the wreck and the sea was calm. As he spoke we harkened; the thump- thump of the row-locks came across the water in the direction of the reef where the Dora was stranded. ‘“ Easier to go aboard and take on what canned goods they need than to risk fight- in’ for ’em on land,” he said grim!y. The pulling of the plug in the cask was pure wantonness of course; cold-blooded murder was the motive; and we knew that no one but the leader could have been ca- pable of that. He had taken this means of killing us off, and it looked as if he might succeed; for the cask was not more than a quarter full when we replugged the hole. | While we were overhauling things I learned how badly we had fared. The cap- tain’s sea glasses were missing. The bin- oculars were the only thing apparently which had been removed from the heap of Stores. The thump-thump of the straining row- locks stopped a minute or two later; a voice floated in across the waters giving some sort of an order. Then silence. ‘““Boardin’ the wreck,” Ross explained. ‘““T wonder wot ’ll come when they broach them boxes?” That had not occurred to me, but I saw right off that the sailor was right. They would be opening those leaden packets now. I was wondering what their greedy eyes would see when I caught a little pin- point of light in the midst of the darkness which hid the placid waters of the bay. Just then Langton and the girl came among us and I heard the skipper notify- Eomicbooks com