The circle banner. [volume] (Circle, Mont.) 1914-1939, 1915-01-29
CHAPTER XII.

verse profanity; of cutters, and blunt
nose schooners, and tramps, canvas
and steam, some of them honest, some
of them shady, and some of them pi
rates of the first water who did no.
find it necessary to hoist aloft the
skull and bones. The seas are dotted
with them. They remind you of the
once prosperous merchant, run down
at the heel, who sinks along the side
streets, ashamed to meet those he
knew in the past You never hear
them mentioned in the maritime news,
which is the society column of the
ships; you know of their existence
only by the bleached bones of them,
strewn along the coast
You who crave adventures on high
seas, you purchase ticket, steamer
chair, and couple of popular novels,
go on board to the blare of very
Indifferent brass band, and believe you
are adventuring; when, as a matter of
fact, you are about to spend a dull
week or fortnight on a water hotel,
where the most exciting thing is the
bugle's call to meals or the discovery
of q card sharp III the smoking room.
Take real ship, go as supercargo, to
the South seas; take the side streets
of the ocean, and learn what it can
do with hurricanes SYMPTOMS, blister
ing Gains, and mems souls. There will
be adventure enough then. If you are
weakling, either you are made
strong, or you die.
An honest ship, but run down at
the heel, rode at anchor in the sound,
q fourth-rater of the hooker breed;
that is, her principal line Of business
was hauling barges up and down the
coast. When she could not pick up
enough barges to make it pay, why,
she'd go gallivanting down to Cuba for
bales of tobacco or even to the Ber-
mudas for the heaven smelling onion.
Today she was an onion ship; which
precludes any idea of adventure. She
was about four thousand tons, and her
engines were sternward and not
amidship. She carried two masts and
a half dozen hoist booms, and the only
visible sign of anything new on her
was her bowsprit This was new doubt
less because she had poked her nose
too far into her last slip.
Her crew was orderly and tractable
There were shore DRINKS, to be sure,
because they were sailors; but they
were at work. They moved about
briskly, for they were on the point of
col Nm 70, hn n for
more onions. Presently the windlass
creaked and shrilled, and the blobby
links, much in need of tar paint, red
as fish gills, clattered down into the
bow. Sometimes they painted, the
chain as it came over; but paint was
costly, and this was done only when |
the anchor threatened to stay on the |
bottom.
There was a sailor among this crew,
and he went by the name of Steve
Blossom; and he was one of his kind A
grimy dime novel protruded rakishly
from his hip pocket, and his right
cheek was swollen as with the tooth
ache, due, probably, to generous
''chaw' of Seaman's Delight. He was
a real tobacco chewer for he rarely
spat. He was as peaceful as a back
water bay in summer; non-argumenta-
tive and passive, he stood his watch
in fair weather and foul
No one gave the anchor any more
attention after it came to rest The
great city over the way was fairy-like
n it's haziness and softened lines. It
was the poetry of angles, of shafts
and spars of stone; and Steve Bios
som, having a moment to himself,
eaned against the rail and stared re-
yretfully. He had been generously
Trunk the night before, and it was a
pleasant recollection. Chance led his
dance to trail down the cutwater His
leck stretched from his collar like a
urtle's from its shell.
well, I'll be hornswoggled" he
shifting his cud from star
oard to port.
Caught on the fiuke Of the anchor
yas the strangest looking box he had
yer laid eyes on. There were leather \
nd steel bands and diamond-shaped H
7ory and mother of pearl, and it hung \
,untily on the point of the rusty fuke.
nybody would be hornswoggled to
limpse such droll jest OF fate. On
le fiuke of the old mudhook, by a
air. you might say. In all the wild
"a warns he had ever read or heard \
lere was nothing to match this.
Treasured /
And Steve was destined never to be
assive again. His first impulse was
call his companions; his second i'm
Use was to say nothing at all, and
ait for an opportunity to get the box
his bunk without being detected. Il
reasure. Diamonds and rubies and Il
,arls and old Spanish gold; all hang |.
2 to the fluke of the anchor. Il
"Hornswoggled!" in kind of awe ..
me whisper this time. AN we =
eadin' for tn Bahamas! For under
S feet he could hear the rhythm OF al
gines. 'What'll do? If | leave 1t, al
me one elsell see it" He scratched al
5 chin perplexedly; and the cud went al
ok to starboard Il got it," M
He took off his coat and carefully til
opped it down over the mysterious he