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Show THE FALL OF ENDERSON By David A. Wasson. BULLNECK ENDERSON, cock of the forecastle, chased little Ted Green into a cul de sac forward for-ward of the foremast and proceeded to give him an artistic facial adornment of lampblack, dex-trously dex-trously applied with a stubby forefinger. At the result the rest of the watch-below guffawed loudly. For Seaman Green stared wild-eyed through sinister sinis-ter rings of smut, and bared white teeth in impotent impo-tent rage under a painted mustache of most piratical pi-ratical mien. "You cowards!" he howled. "Why don't you take some one of your size? I'll I'll go off somewhere some-where and die, and then I'll come back and ha'nt ye! That's what I'll do!" Ted's penal code knew no direr threat. "Oh no you won't, Teddy," good-naturedly corrected the bully. Grinning, he picked up the struggling youngster in his brawny arms, deposited de-posited him in his bunk and calmly sat on his stomach. The long suffering Ted was used to being chased, laughed at and sat on. None of these Innocent diversions of his fellow-jackies particularly particu-larly outraged him; in fact, he usually took the horseplay in good part. But this forcible presentation pres-entation of a fierce 'pair of mustaches was a subtle reflection upon the integrity of tho somewhat some-what dubious growth he had already under careful care-ful cultivation, and therefore a deadly, unforgivable unforgiv-able insult. "I'll ha'nt ye!" shrieked Ted Green, able seaman sea-man of the barkentine Mercator. "You'll have to think up something terribler than that to scare this gang, Teddy, oia Doy," declared de-clared dome-headed iSeaman Jake Jepson, tho smoky lamp on the mast shadowing his face weirdly as ho sat up. "This is an up-to-date and enlightened bunch of gents we've got this trip, and don't you forget it!" "iThen ye might be in better buslnes than tattooin' me like a wild Injun!" spoke the aggrieved ag-grieved Ted from beneath Bullneck's generous bulk. "Oh, let the kid alone!" said old Dad Cotton, the oracle of the forecastle. "But honest, fellows, speakln' of ha'nts, it is queer how they've fell into in-to disfavor since I 'been going to sea. "Wily, 1 cal'late, if a man had the nerve to stand right up In his boots and swear he seea a spook, why he'd mighty soon find hisself being took care of by the proper authorities!" A trespassing sea crashed thunderously on the deck above their heads. "We'll all be spooks together to-gether if the Old Man don't get some of these kites off her pretty quick!" whined sandy-haired Seaman Parkin, the pessimist On her way from Boston to Rosario, lumber laden, the Mercator was staggering southward among sweeping surges black as the night itself. The northwest gale off her quarter swellod her tense canvas to the bursting point, and the two sailors In oilskins at the wheel stood knee deep in hissing brlme more often than not. Some shipmasters ship-masters would have been thinking about heavlng-to; heavlng-to; but stocky, grizzled Captain Clear of the Mercator was a hustler, and only busied himself with deciding what sail she could best do without. with-out. He called red-faced First Mate Dickey into consultation. A few minutes later the second in command picked his way forward over the deckload and shouted Into the forecastle companion: com-panion: "All hands! Shorten sail!" "It's about time!" growled the men, imbued with Parkin's discontent. They trooped aft and lowered the spanker, which fought viciously against being tied up. She steered more easily then; and the mate ordered them forward again to clew up some of the square sails. These were pulling on ahead as if eager to yank the spars clean out of her. The men relieved her of theforesail and royal. The whole ship trembled then as the canvas, leashed in the clewlines, threshed and boomed in the gale. "Pretty night to go aloft, this!" complained Enderson, as he swung himself into the shrouds. But where the bully led the rest must needs follow, fol-low, and his subjects meekly spat on their hands and trod the ratlines after him. For the shuttling shut-tling sails must be furled, or they had been better left up. High up the royal yard Ten Green, smallest and nimblest of the crew, found his "way, and edged out along the slender footrope. The to'gallantmast cut wild circles through black space, and the ballooning sail whipped and slashed and thrashed in a mad endeavor to be free. Hung as he was between sea and sky, to Ted the rush of the following combers far below was one with .the scream of the wind in tne rigging. The night was full of hideous storm-sound. Furling Fur-ling sail at that dizzy height reasonably might have been furthest from the thought of the men perching there so precariously hanging on like grim death might well have occupied their minds to the utmost. "Let the bloomin' rag slat Itself to pieces, I say! We can't do nothing with it!" yelled the fellow next to Ted on the yard, and without looking the little seaman knew that his companion compan-ion was Parkin. "Them whiskers washed off let?" bawled "jep-son, "jep-son, his other neighbor, on whom the heaviest of tasks weighed lightly. But Ted was silent. With feet braced on the footrope, and the yard under his stomach, he leaned for over and pawed and clawed at the boardlike royal with bleeding fingers, as usual doing far more than his share of the work. Then he made an extra lunge for a tempting fold of the canvas. Somehow his feet slipped, and he turned somersault into rain-shot space! At his agonized cry Parkin grabbed for him desperately, but a fraction of a second too late. He narrowly escaped following the hapless boy himself, and regained his balance sick with horror. "Why didn't you grab him?" he shrieked hysterically hysteri-cally at Jepson; but Jepson hadn't even seen Ted go. The men on the royal yard knew that it would have been a most futile "proceeding to heave-to and lower a boat. From aloft they could have hailed the deck till doomsday without making a soul hear; and in that storm the strongest swimmer swim-mer would have been in merciful oblivion a mile aster before they could have clambered down and made the accident known. So Parkin and Jepson (Continued on Pag 11.) THE FALL OF ENDERSON (Continued from Page 7.) wrestled the unruly sail into subjection, and twenty twen-ty minutes later groped their way down to the deck and reported Green's loss. "Fell from the royal yard, you say? Ain't that a deuce of a note!" said stout Captain Clear solemnly, and gazed silently astern into the wake where pale crests leaped as ifg thristing for more victims. The men clustered around dripping and breathless, and took the sad news with gruff commiseration. com-miseration. "Mighty hard luck!" mourned Dad Cotton. "He was a pretty good sort, too.!" "He was that little chap you were always picking pick-ing on, wasn't he?" inquired the skipper. "Well, you all ought to be ashamed of yourselves!" "Now you all chase yourselves forward and stop chewing the rag!" ordered Mate Dickey. "That's one of the chances we all have to take!" "I'm awful glad I never done nothin' to poor Green!" declared Parkin virtuously, as they obeyed. "Me and him was good pals!" "Shut up!" ordered Enderson in tones that brooked no denial. The cock of the forecastle was harassed and unhappy; the rebuke administered admin-istered by the skipper had gone home to the chief tormentor of the lost seaman. But Enderson En-derson wheeled and gave Parkin a cuff on the ear that landed him ten feet away. Guilty consciences con-sciences sometimes take strange modes of acknowledgment. ac-knowledgment. "You great bruiser!" snarled the victim, not pleased by his prompt election to the vacant berth of butt of the forecastle. "You look out or some one will be hintin' around that you drove poor Ted to his death!" The remorseful Enderson fled forward through Stho night, pursued by specters of retribution whoso menace only he could know. Hu ducked I down from deckload to main deck and wrenched B If ( open the forecastle slide. The flaring light inside B ! had gone out, leaving the place inky dark. Bull- B f neck Enderson entered, and turned back so sud- B " ' denly that he bumped hard into Dad Cotton, who B was coming on at a speed born of anticipatipn H - r of his warm bunk. B f ' "What's the matter with you?" said the old B man savagely, for Green's loss had unstrung them B all. "You look as if you'd seen a ghost!" B "That big sea that come aboard wet my bed- B x ding soaking!" explained the bully with a sickly B grin. "I cal'late I'll sleep out on the deckload!" B i "Not for me!" said Dad, pushing on. "I got B to have my bunk, or I can't get my forty winks B nohow!" He too stepped in at the door, and then i i stepped out again, tripping backward over the threshold and falling into the arms of Jepson. J "What do you think you are? A boomerang?" barked the affronted one. "I can't sleep in there!" grieved Dad, clinging to Jepson for support. "The fo'c's'le won't ever lie the r same with with Ted gone!" "That's true enough!" said Jepson bitterly. B "But you'll find the planks in that deckload are B pretty hard, even if they are soft wood! A man I has to choke down sentiment when he goes to sea!" And the prosaic one pressed on. But the occult influence within sat him precipitately down in the doorway, eyes protruding like beads. "Are you loonies going to block the gangway all night with your monkeyshines? What's eat-H eat-H ing you, anyway?" demanded Parkin. Bj "I jest remembered that the doctor told me I Hi ought to try sleepin' outdoors!" quavered Jep- H I '80n 1 Bullneck Enderson had marshaled his routed B I senses, and now strode to the front, determina- 1 tion written in every step. "It's all very well H I for you wise guys to talk about there not being B such thing as spooks, and only lunatics seeing m ! 'em, and all that!" he rasped. "There's one in B j that fo'c's'le now, and I ain't afraid to say I seen H him! The rest of you chaps can jest look in M ' . there for yourselves! Look in there, I say! I'll K' lick the first man who says he can't see him!" H ' "It's it's Ted Green's ghost," wailed Cotton, m , "and he's got whiskers!" M ! The crew of the Mercator gasped as one man m and instinctively huddled closer together. It was H a roaring Egyptian night, and it would be un- H 'i wise to assert it positively; seeing was at a pre- H I mium. But at any rate there was no rush of H volunteers to interview the mysterious occupant M of the pitchy cabin. The crew of the Mercator were between Scylla R and Charybdis. To declare that they could see Bt the "Thing" inside was to confess mental dis- f ease, if Cotton had assured them rightly a short H, time before; though Dad was not now in the M, mood to taunt them with such a lamentable short- L coming. On the other hand, to deny its unearthly jl presence was to count an encounter with the P lignum-vitae fist of Bullneck Enderson, who was i more than anxious to share the vision. f it "I guoss I'll go and tell the skipper," faltered B Parkin, who was ready to take the tyrant's word IE for it Hj "You won't do no such thing!" contradicted 1 Bullneck, still a bit chary of gibes. "I can handle B this situation myself, see?" B "Yah!" derided Je .n, from behind the uncer- 2 tain bulwark afforded by Dad Cotton's shrinking B figure. "Why don't ye go ahead and handle it, K i then? Why don't ye go in and rustle the blamed M spopk out of there?" H The cock of the forecastle winced. i "Go on and tell the Old Man, Parkin," urged 1 Jepson, gaining in courage. "If there's going to H '' be such carryings-on aboard his vessel he orter HI know it!" H If "Mebbe you're right!" conceded Enderson, and HI with the reluctant admission all hands knew that Bullneck's reign in the forecastle was over. Parkin shouldered aft against the gale, and presently returned with Captain Clear, puffing, skeptical and irritable. "You fellows never ought to have left home!" he declared sarcastically. "Where's your ghost? Show him to me!" Came also First Mate Dickey, contemptuously tolerant of the men's delusion, but not a little interested in-terested in spite of himself, for the crew had been a fairly sensible crowd, and not the kind unduly given to hallucinations. Dickey wedged ahead of the skipper, and audaciously strode into the forecastle; then stopped short and thrust both hands in his pockets, as was his wont when in doubt. "Well, I'll be jiggered! Cap'n, look at that!" he exclaimed. " His mate's astonishment lent the affair caste in Captain Clear's eyes. He ceased his raillery and advanced to the front. From behind him the crew of the Mercator peeped timidly into the gloom of the cabin. Now for the first time they all saw it; a huge detached face staring from out the blackness; first somber and forbidding, the incarnation of Fate; then grinning diabolically like a satyr; all the time uncanny, terrifying, and a-crawl with luminous lu-minous flame! "Gee whillikins!" breathed the master of the Mercator. "If that ain't a ghost, Sir, what is it?" asked Enderson triumphantly. "I'll be slewed if I know," acknowledged the Captain, drawing his revolver, "but Ave can soon find out. A respectable g'host, as you all know, can be shot as full of holes as a Swiss cheese without batting an eye!" Some of the men fancied that they saw a trace of apprehension appear on the apparition's saturnine satur-nine countenance, but if such ever existed it fled when Parkin sprang forward and seized Captain Clear's gun hand. "No, no, Cap'n!" he entreated. "That ghost can't be treated like that! You you know who it is, don't ye, sir?" he asked in a scared voice. "I don't recall having met the gentleman before," be-fore," grunted the skipper, pocketing his gun. "But suit yourselves. You've got to be bedfellows with him, I haven't. Or would your excellencies permit me to bring him out whole?" "Look!" ejaculated some one. Then there slowly appeared on the wall of the forecastle in letters of Are the words: "All hoap abandon ye who enter hear!" Captain Clear leaped into the stuffy little hole with a snort. "I've got no respect for a ghost that can't spell!" he said. A moment later he dragged forth by the nape of the neck the late lamented able seaman, Theodore Theo-dore Green, on whose youthful face lampblack and phosphorus struggled, with results at once fearful and wonderful, for mastery. "Don't touch him!" warned Parkin, the unconvinced. uncon-vinced. "Jepson, what does this mean!" roared the outraged captain. "Isn't this the wretch you reported re-ported we lost?" "We did lose him!" retorted Jepson defiantly. "How about this Green?" snapped the skipper. "I hit on the to'gallantsail when I fell," explained ex-plained Green sulkily, "and then bounced off into the fore-staysail. Slid down onto the fo'c's'le-head and never hurt me a bit! Now go ahead and thump me; I'm used to it!" "Don't touch him!" cautioned Parkin again, But Captain Clear burst into a sudden and unwonted roar of laughter that sounded high above the gale. "Don't touch him is right, Parkin!" Par-kin!" he agreed. "I'll I'll keelhaul the first man that lays hands on him from now on! The little chap has given you great boobies your come-up-pance in good shape!" And he clapped Ted Green, A. B., jovially on the back. From The Bellman. |