Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 7, 1922 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

DIRTY WEATHER. Rutledge could picture the headlines, typed in capitals: AMAZING DISCOVERY UNEARTHED BY CHIEF MATE or DEAD FROM THE NECK UP No, sir! It would never do. He would wait, do as little investigating on his own hook. Perhaps be would make a few in- quiries here and there among the men. He examined the paper itself on which the message had been written. It seemed vaguely familiar to him. At some time or other he had seen another piece similar to it. It was a dirty, cream-colored paper, streaked with faint, yellow lines. Where? From the way the paper was torn it might have been snatched from some one’s hand during a struggle. The thing was teo cleverly gotten up for a joke—the details of it. Then, if it were real, something must be done about it, and that at once. Why, he complained, should this bother be thrust upon him now, in this insufferable fog, when the watches on the bridge were dismal enough? ‘You couldn’t see ten feet beyond the dodger—and the strain on the nerves was so great. Now if it were nice, cheery weather, a fair breeze and the skies blue, he wouldn’t have minded monkeying with such deviltry at all. As a matter of fact, he would have tossed the paper over the side with a laugh —the laugh being for the bereft of the eager ears of the presumably concealed jokester. it was too late to do that now. A definite conviction of reality about the thing had gripped him. “ Mad with this horror.” ‘That was clear enough, but “ —avernr” Rutledge went through the alphabet. At one stage in his career he had held visions of becoming a poet. They had been roese-tinted visions that had been imspired by a decidedly rose-tinted person whom he had met one night in the Seaman’s Mission, out Boca way in Buenos Aires, at one of their excessively polite, and excessively dull, musicales for visiting sailors. 163 That had been many years ago. Cer- tainly three. He had met her four times in all. At the fourth she had confided to him that he ought to give up the sea and become a poet. According to her lisped divulgings the main essentials to becoming one of the creatures were a brace of understanding eyes, prefer- ably blue, and an ability to tack on letters to the after-end of a word until it made sense and the proper rime at the same time. He had thought it wonderful. He had kept right on thinking it wonder- ful, until a certain strong-minded biende in Christiania had enguifed him in her gilded meshes. He had then entered the period—such 4 bitterly exalted sort of a period—when he chose to consider himself a woman hater. He was still in it. He had nothing left to learn about them; the blonde had taken care of that—and incidentally his bank roll. However, the rose-tinted one’s lesson re- mained, so he tacked on the entire twenty- six letters to ‘‘ —avern.” The results offered the words “ cavern” and “‘ tavern.” Neither seemed to possess any sensible connection with the message. On shore, yes. The person might be con- fined in a cavern or in a tavern, but on a ship— Wasn’t it his duty to inferm the old man? He could do it in such a way as to give the impression at first that he imagined the matter to be nothing but a hoax. Then he could swing the point of view around to the possible seriousness of it. The cabin darkened. Rutledge gathered himself with a start. His muscles tightened to firm marble, as if to ward off sonze threatening danger. He felt that someone was on the point of attacking him. There was no one else in the cabin, which had grown darker as though the light coming through one of the ports had been obscured, blocked out. The fog couldn’t have thickened that much— A hand with fingers of steel gripped his throat, choking back the cry that smothered on his lips. He felt a sickening blow— sinking-—sinking— comiclbooolx C©