Action Stories, December, 1938
Hurricane-lashed waters! The rending crash of ship against ship—and the Stinger spikes a warship’s guns to levy toll on a South Seas killer!
“S TINGER” SEAVE had many were others who gave him as much trouble.
enemies. The greatest of them all
Buck Morgan of Levuka was a case in point.
was Larsen of Singapore, but there
Time and again his path crossed the Stinger’s
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and time and again Seave wished he had HE looked at the speaker, a small, frail man finished the man with hot lead. But for some with a sandy, ragged mustache, mild blue eyes reason or other Morgan never mixed with the and a suit of comfortably baggy whites.
Stinger when the little man was in a
“Oh,” said Morgan, grinning more
particularly evil mood, and so he lived to be widely. “Who the hell are you?”
something of a terror in the Islands until the
“Seave,” said the little man mildly.
day the Society of Scars trapped the Stinger
“And your name?”
on Ysabel and he wiped them out.
“I’m Buck Morgan of Levuka. You
The first time Morgan and the Stinger
must be green in these waters,” said Morgan met was in Laviata Lagoon. Strictly speaking, with something of a sneer. He placed his
ships had no business in Laviata at all, for it hands on his hips and laughed malevolently.
was a beautiful little atoll in a Japanese “How come you didn’t skip out when you saw archipelago and the floor was choked with
my tops’ls?” He peered aloft to where one of virgin oysters. However, as it was exactly the the schooner’s crew was perched in the
place for a man to garner a fortune in a day or rigging with a telescope and incessantly
so, it was inevitable the Stinger should some scanning the horizon. Seave blinked.
day anchor there, especially as he was then
“The Japs use steamers,” he explained
only a penniless small shipowner, with all his mildly. “I saw no reason to run from a sailing fortune to make.
vessel.”
To anchor in Laviata and to dive for
“Is that so?” Morgan laughed again.
the untapped oysters invited, if a warship “Well, I suppose you’ve got her about chanced along, almost certain death, if not stripped.”
from rifle fire almost certainly from years in a
“Half stripped,” corrected Seave. “You
stinking jail. Such prospects never bothered see, it’s foolish to clean out a lagoon. Leave the Stinger, as all the Islands knew later on.
half there and in a few more years you can
This was proved when he served four months
come back. The oysters propagate....”
in Siberia for poaching seal, and the story of
“Aw, don’t give me a lecture. I’ll take
his escape and vengeance is an epic in the
what you’ve brought up.”
South to this day.
“I don’t understand,” murmured
At this present time, however, the Seave, rubbing his throat. “I’m afraid I’m not Stinger was little known, and Morgan, running very quick at understanding things, Captain.”
into a lagoon at Laviata, had not the slightest
“Half the shell, fool! You’re not
idea of the sort of man he was bucking. He
opening it here, I take it. Got it in your holds, saw, did Buck Morgan, already at anchor and eh? All right. I’ll send some men aboard t’
busily diving for the shell, a small, battered relieve you of it.”
old schooner and he sniffed with contempt. He
“Piracy, eh?” said Seave, blinking
himself had a brig, heavily manned and again. “Well, you see ...”
splendidly outfitted, and he bore a reputation
“Piracy?” Morgan laughed, his face
for toughness that many adventurers envied.
crinkling up derisively. “What in ’ell d’ you As soon as he had his ship anchored he call looting the lagoon? ... Aw, what’s the use dropped a boat, manned it with six armed men o’ talking? Come on up, boys.”
and pulled across to the schooner. He came
The men in the boats below laughed
overside grinning to himself and was a little and two of them stood up ready to shin
astonished when a voice said, “You can tell aboard. Seave coughed and went on rubbing
your men to remain below.”
his throat.
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3
“I hate to soil my decks,” he said Morgan’s revolver crashed to the deck while crisply. “But I shall kill the first man to board he stood looking stupidly at a bleeding scar me.”
across the back of his own right hand. “Hell!”
Morgan swung back on him with an
he whispered thickly, and that was all.
astonished oath, his right hand dropping to his
“I suggest you go,” said the Stinger
gun butt. The little frail man’s mild blue eyes gently, “before I get angry.”
had changed to the color of sheet ice and
“I’ll kill you for this,” said Morgan
something about them caused Morgan to slowly, looking up at the other, his face white swallow involuntarily. He recovered himself but his eyes burning with rage. “No man can next moment, however, and the hot blood
shoot me up and get away with it.” He turned flooded his face a’s his rage mounted.
abruptly, slid overside to his boat and gave
“You’re crazy, man!” he roared. “I’ve
word to push off.
got enough men aboard my packet t’ eat this Seave was motionless for as long as it
ship alive. Get up on the poop and keep still.
took the boat to get far enough from the side I’m taking what shell you’ve got and cleaning so he could see it. Then he walked to the rail, the lagoon of the rest. Beat it!”
smiling coldly, his right palm caressing the
“You heard what I said,” snapped the
worn butt of a gun under his left armpit.
Stinger, but Morgan only laughed and, slowly
“Something tells me I have not seen
drawing his gun, he tapped the Stinger’s chest the last of you,” he murmured. He remained
with the thick blue-steel barrel of it.
contemplating the receding boat and the
“Beat it, son. I’m Buck Morgan of
anchored brig until he was aroused by the
Levuka and I’ve killed better men’n you for excited voice of his mate, Brockwell,
saying less. Thank your lucky stars that I ain’t demanding to know what was the matter.
taking your ship as well. Come on up, boys!”
“A little unpleasantness,” sighed the
There was the sound of a man Stinger. “Have you ever heard of Buck climbing up the schooner’s side, and Morgan Morgan?”
turned contemptuously away to watch. The
“So that’s his brig, is it? We were just
first of his men shoved a head above the
pulling in from the beds when she anchored.
scupper, reached up for the rail, then dropped Thought I recognized it. Have I heard of him?
back in a limp heap to crash into the boat
He’s the biggest cutthroat south of ’Frisc
o.”
below, a neat hole between his eyes. The roar
“I’m glad of that,” said the Stinger. “I
of a shot filled Morgan’s ears and he whipped have just been forced to kill one of his men round with a frightened oath.
and to wound him.”
He saw the Stinger standing exactly as
“Wound Buck Morgan?” Brockwell
he had stood the second before Morgan turned looked scared. “Well, we’d better cut th’ cable from him to the rail. The little frail man was and slide. He’ll wipe us out. He carries a big slowly rubbing his throat and there was no
crew.”
sign of a weapon about him, nothing, in fact,
“I did intend to sail this evening,”
to betray that he had fired save wisps of blue, Seave replied gently. “But we will now put in acrid smoke curling up before him.
another day’s diving.”
“You swine!” roared Morgan, and
“That’s just asking for trouble,”
lifted the gun he was carrying. He never knew protested Brockwell, nervously cocking and
how the other man found a weapon but uncocking a Winchester carbine he carried.
suddenly in the Stinger’s right hand there was The Stinger smiled his little wintry smile.
a glint of steel, a spurt of orange flame and
“Why else did you think I was
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4
staying?” he said.
had already violated every caution other men used.
IT was near midnight when Morgan attacked,
Other men had not dared to work after
exactly as the Stinger expected him to do. The dark, whereas the Stinger had, for two nights attack came in two boats, one planning to
running previous to the last, worked by flare round the schooner’s stern and the other to light. The accepted method was to put to sea make for the fore chains and effect a boarding at night and to run in again with the dawn so that way.
that a steamer could not turn the lagoon into a Seave, walking his poop unperturbed,
trap. Seave explained his actions by merely gave a curt order to Brockwell as soon as he saying to Cassidy afterward that he knew
caught the phosphorescent flashes of the nothing was going to happen because his palm muffled oars, and the mate lighted and set
hadn’t itched until Morgan came along.
adrift on thick flat boards two white flares.
Morgan, of course, had no fear of being in the The oncoming boats rowed full into the bright lagoon, for without a shell aboard it would be radiance and stopped irresolute until Buck hard to convict him.
Morgan’s angry voice could be heard urging
Once the sun was well up, Seave sent
them on. In each boat a man began to shoot at his boat’s crews out again as if nothing had the flares and one was actually extinguished happened. An hour later Morgan attempted to by this means before a rifle began to speak launch two boats to dive some distance from slowly and with precision from the schooner’s the Stinger’s, but they were hardly clear of the poop.
brig’s side when once again that rifle began to Brockwell declared later it was talk slowly and with precision from the uncanny. For a man even to make a hit in that schooner’s poop.
uncertain, wavering light was wonderful
Seave seemed to be enjoying himself.
enough, but the Stinger placed his shots as if He sat in a comfortable cane chair, his rifle he was firing in the glare of full day. He killed resting on the taffrail and a glass of gin on the two men in the leading boat, crippled one in deck beside him. His first six shots riddled the the other boat and with his fourth shot boats, three holes in each, and Morgan, on his whisked the cap from Buck Morgan’s head.
own poop, shook his fists and swore in a high-He seemed to have a whim to let the leader
pitched, hysterical voice. Also he was foolish live, for even after the boats had turned back, enough to open fire with four men hidden
pulling in frantic haste for the brig, Seave behind his deck houses and the Stinger got
could have shot Morgan but refrained.
them, one after the other, through the shoulder
“He slept like a kid all the rest of the
as they exposed themselves to shoot.
night,” Brockwell declared later. “He hasn’t a By this time the half-foundered boats
blasted nerve in his body. I can tell you I was belonging to the brig had returned to the
hopping all over the ship with nervousness
mother ship, and Morgan, in furious despair, until the moon rose. But Seave had the right tried to snipe at Seave’s boats far out on the idea. Morgan didn’t bother us again that lagoon. When Seave had wounded two more night.”
of his men the other captain gave up. It
The Stinger came on deck the next
dawned upon him that he had no ordinary
morning, freshly shaven, dressed in spotless free-trading sailor to face and that, if nothing white and apparently as much at ease as if
else, he faced a man who was a wizard with
he’d been anchored in Apia. He seemed both rifle and revolver.
unaware of the fact that in stripping Laviata he Wherefore Buck Morgan of Levuka, a
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5
terror to many and a man who never admitted his bandaged hand.
defeat, picked up his anchor and fled from
“The swine gave me that. I buried men
Laviata as if the devil himself were at his yesterday. Look at the bullet holes in my
heels.
boats.”
The Stinger smiled his little wintry
“Ah, so you were there, too,” breathed
smile, and that was all.
the Jap.
“He told me that if Morgan had been
“I went in for water,” said Morgan
any decent-spoken sort of chap he’d have let sulkily. “You’ve got nothing on me. Go and
him pick up what was left of the shell,” take a look at Laviata.”
Brockwell declared. “But he can’t stand any
“To be sure,” said the Jap, smiling and
funny business. I can give you one tip. You bowing. “And we thank you, Captain.”
can talk and argue with him so long as his
Morgan laughed outright when he saw
eyes are blue. But when you see ’em turn sort the Jap climb up the side of the warship and of like ice, then back off and run. The that vessel’s course set to the north while argument’s done.”
black smoke began to pour from her funnel.
“That’ll give this Seave bird something
NOW there would have been no more to this
to think about,” he boasted thickly. His mate, incident, perhaps, save that Morgan would
a man named Boris, shook his head and
have remained an enemy, had not the brig,
looked troubled.
running furiously south for the whole of that
“That’s ag’in all th’ rules, Cap. If they
day and the next night, been halted the ever found out we told ’em, all th’ Islands’d following dawn by a shot across her bows. A be ag’in us.”
snaky-looking stubby-funneled warship slid
“If you keep yer blamed mouth shut,
alongside and Morgan sighed with relief that who’s goin’ t’ know?” demanded Morgan
he had no shell aboard when he saw her flag.
irately. “Think I’m letting a little swine like Quite tranquilly he submitted himself to a
him shoot me up?”
search.
Boris subsided but he was very
“I was blown out of m’ course,” he
troubled just the same. It was against all the explained moodily to the dapper little Jap unwritten rules for one
free-trader to inform lieutenant who boarded him. “I’m not a on another.
poacher.”
“Of course not, Captain,” said the Jap,
TWELVE hours later Brockwell, Seave’s
smiling. “You haven’t seen any other vessels mate, shot down the companion to the main
around, I suppose?”
cabin and leaned across the table toward the Morgan’s eyes glittered malevolently
Stinger, who was slowly eating a light meal.
at that and he saw the way to repay for his
“Warship,” he jerked breathlessly, his
scarred hand and his dead men.
face ashen. “The lookout saw her smoke. We
“Oh, sure. There was a schooner in
ain’t out of Jap waters yet.”
Laviata Lagoon.”
The Stinger masticated the mouthful of
The Jap stiffened and eyed him food he was already engaged on, drank a glass suspiciously.
of water, lighted a cigar, pushed away his
“You’re not sending us on a wild plate and said gently, “Is there no sign of goose chase? We were at Laviata only four
wind?” The schooner had been becalmed
days ago. I warn you....”
scarcely twenty miles from Laviata and lay
Morgan jerked a stubby forefinger at
without motion save for a heavy rolling.
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6
“Jest catspaws,” choked Brockwell. “It
to work. No onlooker would have thought, to ought to freshen any minute. The glass’s right.
watch the Stinger as he stood by the rail,
What shall we do?”
Davey Jones’ Loot by Albert Richard Wetjen Page 1
