Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1916-10-19
CHAPT Err w.
Willfui MisSinn-

1t was one o'clock in the morning
before Whitaker allowed himself to be
persuaded; fatigue REINFORCED every
stubborn argument of Peter Stark's to
overcome his resistance. ooh, have
your own way" he said at length, I'M
consciously iterating the words that
had won him a bride. ''If it must
Beyond drawing heavily on his bank
and sending DrummOnd q brief note,
Whitaker failed to renew cOmmunica-
ton with his home. He sank into
state of Semi-apathetic content. The
Adventures was five months out of
port before he began to be conscious
that he was truly accursed. There
came a gradual thickentng of the
shadows that threatened to eclipse his
existence. And then, one day as they
dined with the lonely trader of an
isolated station in the D'EntreCaSteauX
Islands, he fell from his chair as if
pOleaxed. He regained consciousness
only to shiver with the chill of the
wind that's famed by the wings of
death. 1t was impossible to move him.
The agonies of the damned were his
when, with exquisite gentleness, they
lifted him to q bed.
Stark sailed in the Adventures be-
fore shutdown of the%same day, purpos-
ing to fetch a surgeon from Port
MOresby. Whitaker said last farewell
to his friend, knowing in his soul that
they would never meet again. Then he
composed himself TO die quietly. But
the following morning brought q hap
chance trading schooner to the island,
and with it, In the estate of sUUeI-
cargo, CrapulOus Scotch gentleman
who had been q famous specialist of
London before drink laid him by the
heels. He performed a heroic Oper-
alton upon Whitaker within an hour,
announced by nightfall that the pa
tient would recover and the next day
sailed with his ship to end his days in
some abandoned Australian boozing
ken-as Whitaker learned in Sydney
several months later
In the same place, and at the same
time, he received his first authentic
news of the fate of the Adventures.
The yacht had struck on an uncharted
reef, In heavy weather, and had foun-
dered almost Immediately. OF her
entire company, a solitary sailor man.
aged to cling TO life-raft until picked
up, week after the wreck, by a tramp
steamship on whose decks he gasped
III !,
breathS.
Whitaker hunted up an account of
the disaster in the files of a local news
paper. He read that the owner, Peter
Stark, ESQ, and his guest, 81. NJ. Whit
aker, Esq, both of New York, had
gone down with the vessel. There
was also a cable dispatch from New
York detailing Peter Starh's social
and financial evidence
that the news had been cabled home.
To all who knew him Whitaker was
as dead as Peter Stark.
''There is world outside the one you
know
To which for curiousness Ell can't
compare;
1t is the place where wilful musings
go,
AS we can testify, for we are there"
Kipling's lines buzzed through his
head more than once in the course of
the next few years; for he was
there" They were years of such
yagabondage as only the South Seas
countenance; neither unhappy nor
very strenuous, nor yet SCARED by the
tooth of poverty. Whitaker had be-
tween four and five thousand dollars
in travellers checks which he convert
ed into cash while in Sydney. Me-
mory of the wreck of the Adventures
was already fading from the Australian
mind; no one dreamed of challenging
the signature of a man seven months
dead. And as certainly and as quietly
as the memory, Whitaker faded away /:
Hugh Morten took his place. and Sgd
ney knew him no more, nor did any
other parts wherein he had answered
to his rightful name.
The money stayed by him handsome