Illinois News Index

Highland Park Press, 8 Mar 1928, p. 18

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Such a shade lay across the girl‘s face. When the Rainbow rose to a surge, the shadow moved, as a curâ€" tain up, and the sunbeam caught in turn and illuminated perfect teeth, dimples, eyes that danced with fun; â€"set aâ€"flame the crown of bright hair, her most noticeable endowment. ~_She might have swept the ray into the corners, but she besitated to the vision of the night before. , whe held the blankets up inâ€" r and, in ailence turned the jet What‘s Happened Before Palmyra Tree and her parents, with Palmyra‘ two suitors, Van Buâ€" ren Rutger and John Thurston and some other friends, are cruising on the yacht Rainbow. you cold? I have two blankets." She stood, waiting, listening. She could feel the darkness moxe with unâ€" Palmyra is startled by seeing a hand thrust in through the port of her cabin, makes a secret investigaâ€" tion and discovers a stowawayâ€"a man so mild in appearance that she is disappointedâ€"and tells him so. He commands her to glance at the door. She obeys and sees a huge‘ fierce, copperâ€"hued manâ€"with a ten inch knife held between grinning lips. Now read on! CHAPTER II I Next morning Mrs. Crawford andJ her guests were gathered in lee of . the deckhouse, bundled in their rugs. | Presently, however, a wellâ€"authenâ€" ticated chin settled into place and two lips grew arbitrary. She arose, exâ€" eused herseif, and marched down the companionway. Yes, the blankets were still there. She snatched two, secured her torch and reached the buikhead unchalienged. She switched on the torch, forced herself forward. Then, after a moâ€" ment‘s hesitation: "Here â€" you! Are The sun, only at intervals, bad been blinking through, bringing a touch of warmth to the surffee of the sea, charming the spreading can; vas into life. As, presently, Palmyra roused from her preoccupation to join the others in a laugh, the luminary glanced down again and printed on the deck, black and sharpâ€"edge, the lifting shadows of the sails. At this point the shadow of the sail | came swooping down again across Palmyra‘s eyes and she awoke to find | that Mrs. Durley, the stewardess, was | regarding her with an amused and : curious expression. The girl flushed guiltily. | "A gentleman to see Miss Tree?" inquired Mrs. Crawford in amused acceptance of the play. "Why, how unexpected !" "Airplane or sea horse," questionâ€" ed Van. At this moment she caught sight of the man himself, standing in the alley between the bhouse and the rail. "Mrs. Crawford," she introduced. "this is Mr. Burke, the well known pirate. Will be pleased, yo ho ho, to demonstrate walking the plank. I‘m sure if you could see him scuttle a ship, you‘d feel we‘d been greatly disâ€" tinguished." feature, there was now more visibly upon it a maturity of significance that could only have been stamped by dissipation, hardship and danger, or some more violent temperamental urge than, at first view, could have Moreover, he now verged on the pathetic, shaking with cold. Palmyra recollected, with a stab of pity down The girl started, impulsively, to vise, then sank back again. She had seen the steward below, a short time past, overhauling blankets, a reserve supply for the men forward. If she could manage to get one or two of these coverings . . . Compassion She should have suspected a secâ€" ondâ€"presence. One glance at Burke‘s hand, gloved though it was, should have sufficed. It was small, pudgy, never the thick sinewy paw that had fastened upon the cabin port. Her wits about her, should have mistrustâ€" ed Burke‘s song; not have waited to be told afterwards that he was chantâ€" ing: "Silent, go, stand against the door, knife in teeth, and look terâ€" rified." By daylight the pirate‘s face had lost its cherubic aspect. Still sinâ€" gularly undeveloped as to line and But if Burke‘s face had gained in significance, his figure had not. urged the deed. Butâ€"she was afraid But soon she was somber again.| but a pretty ga She had been shaken by that fieree| Which, laâ€"adies ai visage leaping out at her from the| Sea beautyâ€"parlor dark. \ _ ‘"Tis deeâ€"lightf That prisoned space gave no sound J But, brief as the interval, it had been enough. Here at last was the fhand that had been sent through the , port: square, sinewy, brown; adorned j even to the greatâ€"grandmother mitts. | _ "‘Tisn‘t so much that he‘s . got | hair," Burke was saying, "as that \his hair ain‘t black, as you‘d expect, |\but a pretty gay species o‘ tan. | Which, laâ€"adies and gents, is South "It isn‘t a joke," she affirmed, "My family name is Tree and â€"‘ she glanced amusedly at Constance â€" "my given name is Paim." savage, spoke animatedly, nodded his} head toward her. The brown man‘s| eyes soiight the girl‘s face once more | and she felt sure he had, in some| obscure way, been moved. There was | certainly a something new upon that | Almost, the girl sprang back, cried out in panic. her from the dark. For a Bash it seemed that it must be herself they ment to seize. Then they closed upon the blankets, rested there an instant, withdrew with their prize again into the night whence they had come. A moment the fingers paused. Then they came thrusting toward If the savage recognized her she was unable to note any change in his countenance. Indeed, she saw that this copper mask would seldom, if ever, yield to the civilized eye any useful indication of the mood within. "Exeuse me, miss," Ponape Burke said, "but didn‘t I hear this gent aâ€" calling you ‘Pailmâ€"tree‘?" She assented. "But what, what kind of a joke. The stowaway stared, grinned, reâ€" peated the name. He turned to his bottle that the fat horizonâ€"burster flung into the bird‘s nest fern. It was a bottle which had held olives. There, as the olive bottle had falâ€" len, the island mother, her babe upon her hip, found it. She had held the empty bottle up before the eyes of the naked brown baby that he might admire the bright red and green of its lithograph. She had tried to make out the inscription upon it. ONYX BRAND ‘The Hubbard Extraâ€"Choice The print was an oddly familiar, yet baffiing unreadable, as a sentence in Russisn would have been to Paimyra. For in the mother‘s alphaâ€" bet there were but fourteen letters: As the savage sat upon the hatch, a corner of blanket touched the teakâ€" wood. When he reached down to resâ€" cue the fabric his thick right fore arm shot out from cover and so reâ€" mained. The girl became aware of a line of blueâ€"black markings along the spring, this lion of a man would not now be here. Far away on some somnolent speck of coral he would be drowsing through the years; ignorant as to white men‘s ways, safe forever from the questionable leadership of When the girl came on deck next morning there the savage sat, cross~ legged on the foreâ€"hatch, huddled unâ€" der his blankets in the sun. As Palmyra and her parents apâ€" peard, Ponape Burke was explainâ€" ing that the remote intelligence at his feet knew no word of any white man‘s language. Ponape Burke, showman, had seized a double handful of the bush of hair on the native‘s head, and was saying: Sea beautyâ€"parlor stuff." "‘Tis deeâ€"lightfully sanitary, laâ€" adies," the showman added, "and colors the hair up any shade o‘ blond y‘like. But â€" " he tittered and glanced audaciously at Miss Tree‘s most envied hue some of ‘em sucâ€" ceeds in getting up is a real orangey nearâ€"red." cross the life course of Miss Palmyra Tree of Boston. But it was not a pop And onlyinow did she belatedly realize that these mitts were not of silk, but of tattoer‘s ink. Van laughed. "Oh, admirable," he cried. "An admirable effect. And never till the moment did I suspect. .. . Why, Palm Tree. . ." _ _ the inner side of this arm. She disâ€" covered with surprise that these taâ€" tooings were lettersâ€"her own alphaâ€" of his brown companion‘s name. If it had been a pop bottle that the fat horizonâ€"burster (white man) flung into the bird‘s nest fern beside bet. At first she did not catch the word because two of its symbals were upside down. _ _ s ‘"Why," she cried im pulsively, "what is that he has tattooed on his Here the pirate took up the story Here, aside from fish, there was often no food except the pandanusâ€" scorned elsewhereâ€"and the cocoanut. The nuts were eaten at every meal; ut one down to the port intending to hang trailing from that if the sailor came near. A roll of the yacht thrust his forearm through. Then the seaâ€" man had turned away and Olive lifted himself back to deck. But far more important than Palâ€" myra Tree‘s courage and kindness was her name. To the white man it had seemed interesting, to the brown, astonishing. "In the low islands," said Burke, "the palmtree‘s the most important thing they got. Couldn‘t live without it a day." Presently the mother‘s face had lighted with inspiration. Here, unâ€" doubtedly among warrios, was the great word. And here, upon her hip, was the greatest man alive. What better, then, than this for a name? is a soâ€"island wordâ€"‘Oâ€"1â€"iâ€"vâ€"e.‘ What to it, think you, is a meaning? And set forth upon a horizonâ€"burster‘s strongâ€"water bottle (to her all botâ€" tles meant liquor)." sense to take that little man seriousâ€" They sit side by side, gripping stolidly the knaki fabric that strug gled, flapping to the wind behind their backs. â€" "Speaking o‘ this big brute," Burke tegan, indicating Olive; "he don‘t do nothing now but ask questions aboul you" knocks us, white and <brown alike, dead in a row." "But do you really believe Paim Tree®~pirate has been in guh battles and all that?" Constance Crawford And so it was the brown baby, to be known forever to all white men as "Olive," and to his South Sea kinsâ€" men, according to their reading of its letters, as "Oâ€"leeâ€"vay." Burke‘s glance took in the silent motionless mass of man on the hatch with prideful ownership. Then he broke again into oddly unadult mirth. "Look at him now," he cried. © Look at him. Mad clear through." ‘‘Mad clear through," repeated his naster. "Since Miss Tree pointed to his arm we all been laughing a lot. And he thinks it‘s at him." ated. For all the accessories of life | the palm could be made, if need were, ) to furnish the material. | And she was named Palmtree! | "But, lady," Burke perlisteil ""taint the things I‘ve mentionedâ€"| not even yer nameâ€"which counts so much asâ€"" he paused calculatingly ; Later in the day. Pailmyra found her pirates alone. â€" like that or not To begin with, said Burke, it was her courage. She hadn‘t squawked at the hand in the port nor the face under the spotlizht. And she‘d come down with blankets when a brown Leing was in misery with cold. As regarded the hand: The stowaâ€" ways, precariously hidden on deck in a boat, had taken the first chance to sneak below. Burke had got to cover, but a seaman, unexpectedly starting that way, would have caught Olive. 'Zhâ€"e isl;;-;ier had slipped overside at that point, dangling from a stanâ€" ckion, only his hands visible. He had hair. "Oh," he added with a shrugrging gesture acquired from the natives, "you‘d never guessâ€"never." He hesâ€" itated in a diffidence strange to his nature. "But think, miss. Here we nre, maybe ten, fifteen years never seeing any woman‘s face except these silly brown critters or perhaps the words that should do justice to his sentiment, but not offend. living being as beautiful as a painted picture. I ain‘t meaning no disresâ€" pect. But that, Miss Tree, as I reeâ€" She was again annoyed, but deâ€" cided to laugh. â€" Burke was silent for an interval, his oddly undeveloped features rather absurd in their maturity of thought, "I suppose," he began at last, "y* haven‘t no idea how a Mary like you hits us islanders, kanaka or white"" here too Jongâ€"sickly, pale, done for. And then, of a He stammered in his effort to find "All pink and white, peaches and THE HIGHLAND PARK PRESS, The girl did not know whether to that hair o‘yours, that red "Im only windjamming, of course," Thurston laughed. "I don‘t doubt our stowaway‘s a little man, suffiâ€", ciently blunt as to his moral percepâ€" tions, but quite harmless, making | himself the hero of every gory story he picks np.eagr to pose as a deepâ€"| sea bad man. But stillâ€"." During this idle chatter the girl had felt, growing with every moment, | a fuller perception of herself aboard this yacht. Never until now had she | bad a complete realization of the intiâ€"| , macy of this cruise with Vanr and‘ ‘John; of the incredible nearness of | | these two to her. She had been, all! at once, appalied. Thus they would | go on through every waking hour, unescapable in their demand upon ; the maie shrouds, the big muscles of| she was sure about the tmoâ€"ch, so arm and\shoulder swelling under his | sure!â€"she could 8y to him. coat, he mever quite the yuchtsâ€"| She‘d demand her stories, man on tfle cruise; always, inâ€" force Yan and also to sit tangibly,\a sompthing of the conâ€") und listen, no matter how rebellious. aboard a at Honolulu, or, | eager to look at him. And she knew possibly, & time a Guam.| he would be perched on the foreâ€" "You all right about| hatch, his brown man as ever at his Burke," said presently. "But did| elbow, silent, motioniess, a pagan joss. you think how thoroughly we‘re! She whiried around to gaze, then bound| down by the old conventional| caught her breath in dismay. nonsense in character reading â€"| Unexpectediy, startlingly, the savâ€" phernology and all that? A age, unbeknown to any one of them develops a big square jaw. Prestoâ€"| all, had materialized himself here, we recognize a determined character,| was sitting almost within their circle. a human buildog. Really, it‘s only| And his eyes were leveled upon her more bone in his jaw. And if he has | in a profuad unblinking stare that a broad high forehead . . " seemed to have been going on for "Solid ivory again," said Van. C "Paim‘s pirate couldn‘t be further from our fixed idea of a cutthroat:| fierce moustachios, hawk nose, deepâ€"| set, piercing, evil eves. Yet in real life your coldâ€"blooded, murdering brute is quite as likely to be some| effeminate youth selling soda water | with a lisp . . " ‘ "Never," said Van, "did I have soda water with a lisp." l Palmyra had been wondering why | everyone on boardâ€"everyone except t Constance â€" wanted her to marry | Van. She saw that they all did, and she felt that their reasons must be good. Constance, of course, said it was only ancestors. The Tree family | worshipped the family tree. "And| Van," Constance had said commerâ€"| cially, "has the finest line of ancesâ€"| tors put out by any house in .\meri‘i ca." It was nothing in Van personâ€"| ally, she had added. "John does things. But Van only is things=." t The girl got up restlessly and stood at the rail gazing out over the sunset sem. As John Thurston went on to amplify his thoughts regarcing Burke she glanced over her shoulder to seoff. n "I could chase your bad man over the deck with a feather duster." She had had a suffocating sense that never, for one instant, could she protect herself from them and their problem. And then, as an inspiraâ€" tion, it had come to her that Ponape Burke should be ber refuge. Until MURRAY & TERRY The Biggest Bargains All improvements in and paid. Exclusive west side district, Ridgewood Drive and Green Bay Road. in wooded lots ever offered. Every lot has a frontage of 75 feet or feet deep. Come and select yours. cerning this Ponape Burke in her $5,000. Easy Terms. Exelusive Agents Phone Highland Park 69 * MURPHY & SCHWALL HEATING CONTRACTORS Hot Water, Vapor, High of Low Pressure Steam Entimates on New and Remedeling Work â€" Repair Work a Speciaity t3 CLENCOER AVENUE #» CLIFPTON AVENUE Telephone Highiand Purk 3637 Telephone Highland Park 2382 LOUISE M rongse EVANS SAMHHL Residence Studio, 829 Ridge Terrace, Evanston. _ Tel. Greenieaf 802 (Continued mext week) HAHY D) state suffering*from flood conditions und unfavorable weather for the past wh“”h- has announced 2 matérial reâ€" wards und Gallatin, 10 per cent; Pulâ€" aski, Randolph and Richland, 15 per cent; and Johnson and Wabash, 20 per cent. The majority of them comâ€" prise river lands, being on or conâ€" tiguous to the Mississippi, Ohio, Waâ€" bash and Kaskaskia, or lesser tribuâ€" will be made to ROX Seeking to lift the burden of taxaâ€" Henry G. Winter SHEET METAL ARTICLES 48 North First Street J. A. SCHWALL @4

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