Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 16, 1921 — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

24 that he shared with two Chileans, the keep- ers, who could not speak English, and who read the note from Calbuco with a grim smile. The note said Dave was to be kept indefi- nitely. “Calbuco was right,” thought Dave. “ This is a landmark, and ‘most every ship in the strait heads for it, one way or the other. Guess I’m shanghaied all right.” Before the first few days of the month had passed he saw why it was necessary to use strong measures to induce helpers to serve on the Evangelistas. There was no boat attached to the light, because there was no place to moor.a boat. The head keeper had a scrofulous disease; the other Chilean was suffering from mel- ancholia, and deaf. He seldom heard a word spoken. In order to escape beatings he made the best of the matter, and worked for the two. In the first month he counted five clear davs. For the rest, fog, rain, and hail, and always wind. Sometimes the spray filled the air so that ‘the could hardly breathe outside the house. By persistent ques- tioning he found that he was expected to serve indefinitely, as the deaf Chilean was “sick.” Also that vessels called irregularly every two or three months—no oftener. In the fog he could hear the sirens of passing craft and on a clear day could glimpse an. occasional coaster or lime- juicer slouching along. ‘These, naturally, gave the EvangelfSstas a wide berth. Dave set his jaw and waited, perched on the platform by the light. The cold ate into this slim body, and the desolation worked on his mind. _'“ And the dirty, sneaking heathens un- jimbered my artillery,” he muttered to him- self. - His revolver had been deftly removed in the whaleboat when he started to climb the rope to the cliff-top. He knew that he would be given no op- portunity to leave the Evangelistas when the next supply-boat came. And that might be two months. So Dave waited for three things—clear weather, an English or American vessel, and daylight. Meanwhile he thought about benevolent Calbuoo, and his eyelids he saw a strange thing. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. the way that the Portuguese had tricked him. | These three things never happened as he hoped. But at the end of five weeks he saw the schooner. It was a dirty-looking craft mov- ing down the coast toward the strait, half visible in the brief twilight. Within half an hour of sighting the ves- sel and marking its course Dave had de- scended ostentatiously into the cabin where the two keepers sat smoking, and had slipped out when darkness closed in. He had reached the edge of the rock and clam- bered down as far as there was foothold. Overhead the beam of the light shot out against the black sky. Dave strained his eyes until he could make out the lights of the schooner; then the stripped off coat and shoes and jumped —as he had often jumped from the iron piers of the lower West Side, when swim- ming in the Hudson. ; Half4way to the schooner he was ex- hausted.. But his shouts had attracted at- tention. A boat put out. 3 Dave told the Ohilean captain that he had drifted out of the strait in a whaleboat and lapsed into unconsciousness. This was because he had no desire to be questioned further. : He was lying on the after-deck at the time, a lantern beside him, and from under A child stood talking to the skipper, a young girl in a gray cloak of a kind that seemed vaguely familiar to Dave. She bent over him until a strand of long, black hair touched his throat. Her face seemed the hue of gold, and her eyes were black as the night itself. -Dave could feel her breath warm against his cheek. That was how he met Seforita Clara. He learned her name. the next day, also that she was a passenger on the Chilote, bound for Punta. When the skipper would have set him to waiting on table Dave re- belled, vowing to himself that he would work for no more Chileans. Aloud he said: | “T’m Senor Calbuco’s huilliche. You sabe that, capataz mio?” Go NOOK = A CO