Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 7, 1922 — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

DIRTY WEATHER. ° “¢ Steward!” The cry was universal. No voice an- swered them. No gliding figure appeared before them. They assaulted the pantry. Lying on the deck of the pantry were three figures—Hong Wing, the saloon mess boy, and the pantryman. Blood flowed from the noses of the latter two. They were moaning energetically. Hong Wing lay strangely silent. An ex- pression that might have passed as a satiri- cal smile rested lightly upon his lips. From above came the noise of crashings. ‘“ They’re destroying the set,” Sparks in- formed the others in a voice that rivaled ranges achieved by wireless. ‘ Your hear that? They’re destroying the set!” In a body they started back for the door of the wireless room—the most breakable door of the lot. CHAPTER VI. NUMBER THREE HOLD AND—WHY? "T's racket in the wireless room stopped abruptly. The only sound amidships came from the successive blows of Rutledge’s shoulder as he hurled his hun- dred and eighty odd pounds of bone and muscle against the locked door. “What a very strong door.” Harris aloofly surveyed Rutledge’s efforts. ‘ You'll have to put some strength into it, Mr. Rut- ledge. Now I should suggest—”’ Before Harris could offer any illuminat- ing suggestions on the subject of battering in locked doors the door on the starboard end of the passage was yanked violently open from the deck side and a sailor tumbled in. He looked for a moment, pop-eyed, at the tableau vivant, composed of Hendriks, pale, tense, and holding a revolver; Rut- ledge, poised for another smashing blow, the light from the overhead splotching down upon the whipcord muscles of his neck and shoulders; Harris, superbly de- tached, very deus ex machina about the whole affair; Sparks, half crouched for a spring. Then he spoke his little piece: “Mr. MacDonald would like to know what is happening, sir. He sent me—” 175 Four figures hurtled past the sailor and out onto the deck. He felt all the sensa- tions of having been intimately mixed up with a typhoon. He followed them, irre- sistibly sucked along in the distinct wake they created, as they scurried around the house to the port side, and came to a four bells and a jingle stop before the deck door of the wireless room. The door was open and it was dark in- side. Sparks drew an _ additional breath, stepped in, and felt for the light switch. It was still there. He clicked it. A wall bracket lighted. | “Yee! Yumped up yimminy, stick it in your eyebrow dot bane some mess!” This effusion being from the sailor who lapsed, in his amazement, into the dialect of his birth. Hendriks turned to him. “Report to Mr. MacDonald that there —that there has been an accident,” he said quietly. ‘‘ Tell him under no circumstances to leave the bridge. I will go up there presently.” “Yes, sir.” Round-eyed—and there is nothing more round-eyed in the world than an amazed Swede—the sailor disappeared up the lad- der. At the top of it the vague form of MacDonald could be seen peering anxious- ly down—a darker blot against the black- ness of the sky. The fog had lifted, and a star or two struggled fitfully for recognition. It was the time of the new moon and the slender paring had already set below the western rim. “Is there much damage, Sparks?” in- quired Hendriks. “Yes, sir. Tell you better in a few min- utes.” “* Look it over, then wait for me in my room. Mr. Rutledge, go ask Mr. Hopper to come to my room and then wait for me there yourself.” “Yes, sir.” Rutledge started below. ‘Mr. Harris, go down and see what you can do about the steward and those two boys. After that put on a deck watch of four men. Station them in places where comicboooks C©