Delaware City press. (Delaware City, Del.) 1913-19??, 1913-04-04

49, The Pacific developed its Bully
#G-T%-9 Hayes the Australian bush shell
$@--ii--S tered the notorious Captain Star.
light, and Tasmania in the seventies was the
theater for the exploits of Coventry Strike-a-
Light, but it is doubtful II either of those wor-
thies at their best, or worst, had anything on
the bright particular star Of the Indian Ocean,
Red Saunders
To have known Saunders was liberal educa-
tion, and when turn of Dame Fortunes wheel
pitched me out on the beach at Maize and into
his company, the tickle old lady unwittngly did
a service not to be too highly esteemed
There is only place in the little town that
n sailor is likely to bring up in--Francois' Ma
hogany Bar" and like everybody else had hung
around that rum ranch until money was as
scarce as frogs feathers l trying to figure
out my next move when Red Saunders hove in
tight.
The barkeep, suppose on the principle
that leads sawbones to give poor devil
dose of dope preparatory to abbreviating his
longitude by leg, set a bottle of liquid tin
tacks up for me, with the kind intimation to
"have the house and clear to blazes out
of here, and my outlook seemed about as bright
as the soul Of a Chinaman, when a red-topped
giant, six feet six by about four feet beam, rolled
In through the door and strobe up to the bar.
"Barkeep, where in Tophet are all the hugger-
muggers today?" he growed in voice like
MaunaLoa in eruption.
Studs" briefly indicated my Improbable
carcass ana shrugged MS SHOULDERS,
that business bad, or even should have
been my way before now.
Solitude will breed strange comradeship any
where, and having nothing else to nail his at
tention, Saunders took good look over me and
showed the "tacks" my way again, saying as he
let go the bottle:
you don't seem dazzling with diamonds,
matey, but maybe you can shoot the CUFF, SO take
another pearler's peg and keep me company for
4 SPELL"
ed legs, giving and receiving the news of the
beach, while was debating in my mind whether
1t would be worth while for me to breach to this
coppernobbed stranger the scheme that had kept
awake nights for months Though gossip and
rumor had made Saunders familiar to everybody
on the beach, the had never crossed my
bows until ten minutes before, and what who
he little Willie could not have guessed. Pre-
vious to his entry there had been nothing on my
horizon, and he certainly a sociable sort Of
brute so putting all my trade in one bottom.
rpened out and laid my dream out for Red to
LII Z. ~ ssS
you look like a blue-water man. none bluer,
and If you find the hooker, can lead you to
the place where minted moguls are lying not too
far down for a number diver to get at; but
I'm cleaned out busted to blazes and can't even
subscribe to the tucker bill. I'm all in, but this
yarns straight stuff If you're looking for fut
ter, here's chance. What dye say?"
l was keenly aware of cold steely drive
that mighty voice rumbled forth
"Show your goods, perish your pet! That CUFF
Is too easy to pass If you've got no rocks at bot
TOM I've got little schooner out in the bay
right now; she's ready for any trip from niger
stealing to pearlpoaching, and can be handled by
two sailor-men; but give us the yarn and give 1t
straight or by the peak of perdition Ill haze you
for trying to throw the bull at Red Saunders!
Here, Francois give that bottle fair wind, and
leave il here"
Back in 1876" I began. "the clipper ship
strathmore, outward bound for Otago, New Yea
land piled up on the Crozets, and when she went
up had fifty odd people aboard, all colonists and
all carrying their entire worldly capital in the
ships strong box. The amount of cash aboard
including a sum for payment of government sal
aries was somewhere around twenty thousand
pounds sterling. or hundred thousand If you
want it in dollars.
THE people were taken off after than
six months of misery but the stuff is still there
and l think be got by diver. The spot is
well laid down and can take you there How's
II strike Sou, capn?"
Red took his second-mate's nip at a gulp ano
gripped me my the arm, growing like South
erly buster
See here, young fellow-my,lad, I've got g
streak of intelligence in me today, and it seems
to that you are sailing straight. Anyway,
like the cut of your phiz and as I've got nothing
bettsr on hand I'm going to take you up on tina
Strathmore job. and We'll get hook this SAINT
rudy p m. I'll stand the stores and put my
boat in it; you'll take us there and we'll go alone
share and share. fifty and fifty; and you'd bet
ter be sure you're sailing straight, for I'm al
ugly blighter when l find I'm being bstered!"
That settled the hash far as / was con
cerned; had no dunnage TO stow, and Red sim
ply yanked me out of the bar and down to thu
beach where his boat lying. telling me Il
row out to a little black schooner in the road
stead and cast off the stops while he went up Il
the town to get barrel of beef and some small
n stores.
The little vessel l boarded certainly
u beauty-regular yacht in lines and deck fittings
When well under way and heading for tn
east coast of Madagascar we arranged to keel
watchI and watch. and each to call the other i
the schooner got out of hand, but after Re-
showed me how the little hooker would lay he
course with the wheel in beckett had N
uualms as to the necessity for more hands an
.-ra.a tI,nt runmld NOT he the first one 4