Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 1, 1922 — page 155: what you’re looking at

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

THE PIE-EYED PIPER. T got my twenty thousand back in a quan- tity, why, that is where I took on signs of wealth, and we went into rapid partner- ship. “Tt’s a kind of a funny thing,” rumin- ated Jeff, after we had fixed up the finances, making Jeff a partner of mine— “it’s a funny thing, but on the island of San Miguel about a hundred miles north of this one we are bound for—on this here San Miguel there are just as many cats as there are rats on the other island.” “ How come?” I asked him. “Oh, somebody took a few of ’em there a couple of hundred years ago and they been populating ever since. Nobody lives there now—too cyclonish.” “ Well I hope we hit the right island,” I rejoined. ‘‘ Cats are too scratchy.” “We won’t miss the rat island,” said Jeff. “ That7?l be my job.” So we went to Seattle, and by using a lot of argument that didn’t savor in any man- ner of a marine or oceanic flavor, but which was composed mostly of the clinking of dol- lar against dollar in a soft, seductive jingle, we got the owner of the old sea wagon, the Bessie Hicks, to come down to eighteen thousand six hundred and seventy- two dollars and twenty-five cents, leaving us just about enough financial reverses to buy supplies for one round or circular trip. Then we nearly went into a nervous de- cline trying to find hardly-able seamen to avast the halyards, or whatever it was we wanted ’em for, and we had to take on nine different foreign elements to make up any kind of a crew, which was discouraging right at the start. No, sir; nobody wanted to take a chance on the Bessie Hicks but Jeff and me. ‘ Those goulashers couldn’t understand more than eight-tenths of what we were trying to educate ’em up with from time to time, because Jeff and me hadn’t ever been nautical to speak of in all our lives. So when we would allege that we wanted to start going in a southerly direction, why, we had to go and get a Malay to change our language into Hindu and then the Hindu would break the words into little pieces and slather it onto a chink, and the Chineser would relay it onto a Swede, and by the 945 time it got around among the boys it would sound like a lot of gossip. It looked like we were talking about that mess of human hash behind its back, which we weren't. We couldn’t think of fitting words to do it with. But we got headed in a direction after the subject had been thoroughly debated in every tongue the world affords—except mebbe Cold and Ox—and then Jeff, he took me into his confidence sufficiently to inform me that we were about to pay the first visit of our regular trips to Rat Catcher’s Delight, or the island of San Isobel. This here outlandish place is located in a longitude and latitude somewhere or other, which Jeff showed me on a map made by, a mapmaker on a Monday morning before he had gone and taken a Turkish bath and a few shots of bromo. That mappish per- son certainly must have been feeling tough when he spilled the ink promiscuously about that sheet of innocent white paper. So I couldn’t make any sense out of his hang- over. But I didn’t figger on getting up in the night and sneaking back there or anything, so I didn’t care if I never did know whether it was north or south of a latitude, or m old Joe Latitude’s backyard. “Tt’s a little island about eight miles across and two hundred and fifty miles off the coast of Mexico,” Jeff explained. “It is populated with a mess of people com- posed mostly of Cholos. It is a good- natured island, and it would raise most any kind of a crop if it wasn’t so busy raising rats. A boat with a game leg or something put in there one day to get doctored, and it casually emptied a herd of these here Asiatical rats thereabouts. They being good at mathematics—multiplying and the like—why, the island is now in the general condition of what you could properly call overrun.” “ Now, this here island of cats—Say Miguel,” I suggested, “‘ why wouldn’t it be a fine idea to bring the two factions to- gether—cats and rats?” “Don’t be silly,” admonished Jeff. ‘Nobody cares about them Cholos—and they can’t go and import cats—no money, no boats, no sense.” CO 1OOOLK C©