The Cruise of the Jasper B.

the East River merges with New York Bay. From his windows he could gaze out upon t

lly, still with the rapt and fatal manner which had daunted the managing editor, he would pa

ructure near one of the immense stone pillars from which the bridge is swung. But, as he lunged, the toolhouse door opened, and a

pped backward; then he came

Cleggett, who had also sprung back, a

g and lowering his lifted club. "Are ye soused, man? Or

fore when he was a reporter, and more recently had re

ou were there, M

cer. "And who were

ering up my wris

ye do the same before, Mr. Cleggett. You're foriver grinnin' to yersilf an' makin' thim funny j

was on him. He was really thinking that, with $500,000 of his own, he had writ

And so's writin' and readin'. Gr-r-reat things! But if ye'll take my advise, Mr. Clegge

ett. And he playfully jabbed the

e air. If I'm compilled to run yez in f'r assaultin' an officer ye'll get

And yet, who does not lie in order to veil his in

t was meant for as pernicious a bravo as ever infested the pages of romantic fiction. Cleggett had been slaying these gentry a dozen times a day for years. He had pinked four of them on the way across the bridge, b

rvoir of unwritten, unacted, unlived, unspoken romance. He ate it, he drank it, he breathed it, he dreamed it. The usual copyreader, when he closes his eyes and smiles upon a pleasant inward vision, is thin

assumed-which he had been forced to assume in order to earn a living. When he reached the apartment, a few minutes after his

ll makes and periods; arms on the walls, in the corners, over the fireplace, leaning against the bookshelves, lying in ambush under the bed, peeping out of the wardrobe, propping the windows open, serving as paper weights; pictures, warlike and romantic prints and engravings, pinned to the walls with daggers; in the wardrobe, coats and hats hanging from poignards and stilettos thrust into the wood instead of from nails or hooks. But of all the weapons it was the rapiers, of all the books it was Dumas, that he loved. There was Dumas in French, Dumas in

bulky manuscript. It was his own work. Is it necessary to

ut as he watched it burn, stirring the sheets now and then so the flames would catch th

ite romances? Why should anyone write anything who is free to

weapons that had been theirs-and Cleggett fought them. There was not an unscarred piece of furniture in the place. He bent the flexible blade in

pier down. After all, the rapier is scarcely a thing of this century. Cleggett, for the first time, felt a little impatient with the rapier. It i

anhattan; high and beautiful above these waves of shadow, triumphing over them and accentuating them, shone a star from the top of the Woolworth building; flecks of light indicated the noble curve of that great bridge which s

ty which called to Cl

ains; it was salt in his nostrils.... And, staring out in

h of dogs as desperate as himself fought his way across the reeking decks of a Chinese junk, to close in single combat with a gigantic one-eyed pi

; he reached the side of a schooner yacht from which rose the wild cries of beauty in distress, swarmed aboard with a muttered prayer that was half a cu

urned from

" he cried.

ped a c

t about his head. "That's the t

hion; the second blow clove his typewriting machine clean to the tat

to a man with $500,000 in his poc