Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 129, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1919 — Page 2

The Deep Sea Peril

VICTOR ROUSSEAU A COPYRIGHT BY W G. CHAPMAW

CHAPTER IX.—Continued. *—ll— Donald turned and began skirting the crinoid bed. The sea devil had disappeared. The water was like a thin, unstable jelly. As they made their way along the bottom of the sett, the fleshy lily arms., reached out toward them like children’s plucking fingers. At last the bed of' crinoids ended. Tffey trod on firmer ground. Their pace became accelerated. He had lost all sense of time. He did not know whether he’ had journeyed one hour or three. He halted because there seamed nothing to do. Then he began to lead the jway back between the two crinoid beds, with the Intention of reaching the clear ground near the entrance to the cave. There, there might be a chance of picking up Davies and Clouts; or, at least, it might be possible from there to return to the submarine with Ida to replenish their oxygen reservoirs. These still, seemed ample, but it was impossible to determine how much oxygen remained. They threaded the mazes of the winding path between the beds, while from either side the fleshy arms stretched out to grapple them. The touch of them was like fiery velvet. The suction of the branches made them cling, and Donald han to exercise all his might to break away. Sometimes their ankles became entangled and they would stumble. Always the arms hid formed a network above their heads before they could regain their feet, and these had to be broken. Under their feet the ooze was white with the skeletons of small fish which the lilies had rejected after devouring the substance that covered them. At length the crinoid beds ended abruptly. They rested on the bottom, seating themselves side by side. Donald felt confident that he could find the submarine. But the delay was sweet, because the disappoin'ment in store for them might prove unbearable. Death or a little life would be the alternative, and the difference was hardly perceptibly Donald raised Ida’s hand to his glass mask and pressed the fingers against it

She let her hand fall caressingly upon his shoulders. She rose to her feet, and he followed her. They looked Into each other's eyes, and. though they could read nothing there, some message of hope seemed to pass. They plunged together into the sea of jelly again . It clung to them, as If It, too, sought to suck them down. The light of the electric lamps was growing obscure. They wandered blindly, struggling in a' medium that was almost impermeable. Donald began to realize that the action of the caustic alkali within the metallic chamber was becoming exhausted. He was beginning to choke. His breath came in deep sighs, and he gulped in the thickening atmosphere. Their steps grew slower. Ida could hardly raise her hied"and fell, picked herself up, and started beside Donald again; then she sank down exhausted. She could not go farther. Death, horrible in form, awaited them. It was becoming imminent. Donald was growing delirious, and in fancy he was strolling with Ida through meadows, plucking flowers. They were to be married on the morrow, and he was going to get leave of absence to take her away. Where should they spend their honeymoon? Off the coast of the Shetlands. Why, he had been there once, long before — All the while he was aware that he was lying on the bed of the sea, but his personality seemed divided, and while one part of him walked in those Elysian fields beside his sweetheart, the other suffered and choked and pleaded impotently with a blind fate for aid —not for his life’s sake, but for Ida’s. . - - * -

The girl’s hand was unresponsive in his own. Perhaps she was dead already. Donald chafed it, but was hardly able to distinguish it in that jellylike environment, which was thickening perceptibly now. The fingers were limp and cold. They were both numbed from the exposure—and Ida was dead. He would follow her, then. Slowly and with deliberation he unfastened the copper cylinder from about his body. At once the little electric light went out. It had grown so dim that only then did Donald remember that it had been burning. He unbuckled the/ headpiece', and took off the mask of glass. He flung it from him. A moment he held his breath as he felt the cool water-jelly Upon his face. Then, very resolutely, be drew in his breath. f 'Vi i ■ i-i - . CHAPTER X The Cave of the Idol. A cry of amazement burst from his lips. He was breathing air—air df the bottom of the sea! \ It was surcharged'with oxygen. It invigorated him. He felt the thrill

of renewed life In Ms body, he felt his shrunken arteries tingle as his heart pumped the new, richened blood through them. It seemed unbelievable. At first he thought that he had died, and that this was the soul’s *awakening. ~' Then, with quick fingers, he unfastened Ida’s body-piece and tore the mask from its fastenings. He heard her sigh, ( . She sighed and stirred and sat up on the ocean bed. “Donaldl” she murmured. “I thought—l thought you were dead. Where are we?” “I don’t know.” he answered, In absolute bewilderment. At that moment he heard the mellow*, gonglike . sound that they had heard aboard the F 55. And slowly, as If 1 n answer to the call, the jellylike medium that surrounded them began to drift away, to be hung up, as if it were a curtain, find before their astonished gaze there evolved the strangest stage setting •that could ever have been conceived. First there came into view the submarine. occupying, as it were, the center of this stage, her bow sunk in the ooze, her stern, still lower. They had been lying within a hundred paces of her. Next appeared the sloping edges of the crater, seen, not through water but through clear air, with a border of yellow crinoids, ceaselessly stirring, ns though a breeze ruffled them. Then there began to be visible. In the flanks of themountain, structures, apparently of hardened mud. taking the shape of fantastic temples, w*ith pillars and doorways with low* lintels, a submerged city of cliff dwellers, and yet each identical wlthits neighbors, so that they seemed toTiave been fashioned with the same unchanging precision as the cells of the bee. And the whole crater swarmed with the sea-monsters, no longer Invisible, but outlined in phosphorescent fire. And, standing in front of Donald and Ida, his features clearly visible through the glass of his own diving mask, surveying them with a cool, dispassionate gaze, was Ira Macßeard! As they stared at him, he raised his hand and struck something suspended from his neck, giving out the mellow sound which they had heard before. Immediately he disappeared from view in the midst of a swarm of the monsters, which, surrounding Donald and the girl, began to push them toward the cavern in the mountain side. The push was gradual, and apparently the result of some natural quality not known on land. There was no sense of muscular movement. It

"Look!” Exclaimed Donald.

seemed to be momentum devoid of the accompanying factor of speed. Irresistibly, and yet quietly, the two were pushed toward the entrance in the flank of the island. In vain Donald resisted. In vain he tried to force a path toward the submarine, dashing his fists against the bodies of the monsters. He made not the least impression upon those halfspherical forms. A sea-man under water and one in the air had very different powers of resistance. He might as well have fought an army of animated featherbeds. Slowly, without strain or attack, he felt himself being forced forward. He was held tightly on every side, except for the narrow gap that opened in front of him. He was forced to devote himself to supporting Ida. On every side the globular, translucent, phosphorescent forms seemed to crowd in on him, leaving only a tiny way in the direction of one of the mud-pillared entrances. Yet, even’ thus, Donald had the impression of sbme unconscious force that animated these monsters ; it seemed like the scouting expedition of a colony of red ants, returning with its booty. He could sense no conscious impulse in the sea monsters.

His pace became accelerated, and suddenly, Donald and Ida found theidselves Within a huge cavern, faintly illumined by phosphorescence, and roofed with the same cloudy substance that they had seen upon the ocean bed without. The monsters left them. The two stood there together, still in bewilderment. But they were not alone, for, with v a shout, Davies emerged from the dim recess, and ran toward them, followed by Clouts. Their cylinders and headgear had been removed. The four stared at one another in incredulous joy. - “They nabbed us the moment we left the air-lock," cried Davies, grabbing the lieutenant by the hand and,

THE EVENING REPUBttCAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

forgetting Ms discipline for the first time. “And Clouts, too. They sort of edged us In here. We were afraid you were dead.” “They gave us a little longer respite,”* answered Donald. “Davies, am I mad or dreaming, or are we breathing under water?” “If you’re dreaming, then Clouts and I are too,” said the little middy. “Hello! There Clouts goes again! I’ve tried to keep him resigned, but he gets frantic occasionally.” With a sudden howl that seemed to rise from the depths of an outraged nature, Clouts, lowering his head, rushed like a battering ram into the doorway. The watchers saw him recoil as if he had butted a feather bed. He looked up, rubbed his head in perplexity, and then, retiring a few paces, repeated his experiment more furiously than before.

Again he_was hurled back, as a ball rebounds from the cushion of a billiard table. The monsters’ bodies blocked the entrance as effectively as If they were of rubber. Slowly Sam Clouts withdrew, looking back with a puzzled expression. Meanwhile the three glanced about. They were in a huge natural cave, in which the sea monsters had evidently been at work, for the interior was coated with mud, hardened in some peculiar manner to resist the water. And yet Donald had the same impression of a beehive. There was something of sameness everywhere, the same sense of automatism. It was quite bare, except at one end, where arose a mud mound, decorated with seashells, and upon this was what looked like the upright skeleton of a small mammal. . ■ • • ■ “Look!” exclaimed Donald. “It came from- —from behind the curtain!” said Davies in awe. “Donald, the air was thicker . . . something keeps rolling back . . . ?” They looked at each other, still unconvinced that they were awake and alive. Then they went toward the object at the end. , Sam Clouts, who had preceded them, fell back with an exclamation of horror. “Yes, Clouts?” said Donald. “I beg your pardon, sir, but don’t you see that it’s meant to be a person, sir?” He spoke the truth. The figure was a rough pile of bones, but high above them a grinning human face, made of the same plastered mud, looked down. It was the first sign of conscious process among the monsters, and some devil craftsman had contrived to catch, not so much the form as the humanness of it.

It was upon a larger scale, precisely such a figure as a child or a savage might have made In its first efforts to reproduce the human figure. There were even the dawnings of art in the shape of whales’ ear-bones, strung, braceletwise, across the breast. The mound beneath the figure consisted of innumerable bones, a sort of kitchen midden such as Neolithic man* left behind him as a testimony to bls oyster feasts. Davies picked up one of the bones and looked at it intently. “Donald!” he said softly, not to attract the attention of Ida, who, seated on the floor against the mound, seemed on the point of falling asleep from weariness. He held out the bone. Both looked at it. It was the bone of a flipper heel. The monsters were cannibal, beyond any doubt. “Davies!” cried Donald, a moment later. “Don’t you see what that figure is? It’s jan idol. And the bones are those of creatures of their own species, and others, sacrificed to it by the monsters in their abominable feasts. If the first dawnings of self-con-sciousness, the awakening of the religious perceptions!” There could be no other interpretation. They looked at each other in horror and something of awe. The thing had been fashioned, perhaps, after an ideal never seen, or perchance some forgotten ancestor, cast up on an inhabited shore, had seen man and returned, to embody him in his remembered guise.

So these half-blind and voiceless devils of the sea were groping slowly upward, as our ancestors had done jnany a hundred thousand years ago, toward hope and endeavor. The Spirit of God stirred in the dull souls of these cannibal monsters, as everywhere. . Donald felt somehow immensely elated at the thought. Even here they were not cut off from the sheltering hand of Providence. “Look, sir!” Clouts exclaimed suddenly. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

He Picked Up a Living.

Sir John Kirk, who recently celebrated his fiftieth anniversary of work in connection with the Ragged School unJon, tells an amusing anecdote of how-he once questioned a London waif whom he had befriended as to his method of eaming } a living. The young fellow’s reply was typical of the London street arab. “Well, guv’nor,” he said, “it’s like this. I picks strawberries in the summer, I picks ’ops in the autumn. In the winter I picks pockets, and, as a rule, I’m pickin’ oakum for the rest of the year.” |

Manifold Uses for Cotton.

In calling attention to the manifold uses for cotton, cotton seed and cottonseed oil, the Boston Herald mention* the following products: Photographic films, automobile windows, buttons “ivory," artificial silk, combs, knift. handles, trunks, book bindings, shoes furniture, headwear, handbags, lard soap, butterine, paints, rubber, guncot ton and smokeless powder used in ex plosives. ■ "

MANAGER PAT MORAN EAGER TO MEET RED SOX IN SERIES FOR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP

•Tm not talking about any pennants or world’s championships,” said Pat Moran, “but if ever I have the luck to land a winner in Cincinnati I only hope the Boston Red Sox will be topliners in the American league. “That’s one ambition of my life —to some day have a club that will beat those lucky people. They had given it all up and were packing their bats to go home when Snodgrass made that muff in 1912. Against my old team they won by transferring the games from the Red Sox park to the Braves’ field. Twice, at the Braves’ field, Cactus Cravath made drives that would have sailed over the fence at Fenway and won two games for my club—and Duffy Lewis caught them both. Then, in Philadelphia, what happened? We had forgotten to take a little pen. a small fenced lot, out of the center field, and they popped two home runs into that tiny quadrangle.”

NEVER DEFEATED

’ Boston baseball teams have ' never been defeated In a world’s " series. In 1903 the Americans " beat Pittsburg; in 1912 they won • from the Giants; in 1915 they ’ downed the Phillies; in 1916 the ► Brooklyn champions were humt bled, and last year the Cubs k were defeated. In 1914 the Bost ton Nationals upset the dope by r trimming Connie Mack’s great L team representing the Phijadelr pfcia American league in four £ straight games.

IS ANOTHER CRAZY SCHMIDT

Pitcher Bagby of Cleveland Indians, Keeps Tab on Batters by Bookkeeping System. • Every pitcher in the big show has first hand information regarding the hitting ability of every player, but few, if any, have as near perfect a record on the batters as Jim Bagby, one of Lee Fold's pitching aces. Bagby has a system of baseball bookkeeping that is unique and he has found it valuable in his career as a pitcher. Some

Jim Bagby.

years ago when Jim was setting the Southern league on fire he fell upon the idea of keeping tab on individual batters and also the different teams as a whole. He did this with aid of a pocket memorandum. .. .- After each game Bagby would record the success or failure of this or that batter, adding such notes regarding the batter’s style as he deemed useful for future reference and guidance. Jim was so successful that season that he has continued the practice. The other day Bagby was asked If he still “kept book” on the batters and answered in the affirmative. The same system that worked so well in the Southern league has been just as' effective tn the American. Jim was tipped off a whole heap when he first went up. but is now tn position to rely upon himself and his own experiences and records.

BASEBALL STORIES

Marty Kavanaugh as a college coach seems to have made good. • • • Eddie Collins has been appointed captain of the Chicago White Sox. .... # ___— It begins to look as if the Braves are going to be much better "than an ordinary team. • * * The Little Rock club of the Southern has purchased Outfielder John Frierson from Houston of the Texas. * * * Pitcher Urban Shocker of the St. Louis Browns, now bach from overseas,. is held in service at Camp Upton. • • • Gus Getz, sold by Pittsburgh to Toledo, has decided, he says, to stick at his home in Newark and work in a shipyard. • * * ' Mike McNally threatens to oust both Jack Barry and Dave Shean from that second base berth with the world’s champions. „ —* e * In exchange for Pete Compton the Seattle club is supposed to send Pitcher McMoran and Infielder Brown to New Orleans. . • ♦ • • The Pirates are trying out a big semipro pitcher named William Mattingly, who hails from Buffalo. He is a right-hander.

* * * Memphis thinks a lot of its contingent of St. Louis ball players, which includes Joe Slattery, Vincent Walsh and Andy High. * * « Art Kores, Milwaukee boy with the Louisville club, may not be able to play this season due to an injury to his throwing arm. • * • Duffy Lewis is now a race horse magnate. He is reported as having bought a pony called Veteran, said to be a comer on the track. * * * They are going to put Harry Sallee In a baking machine in,a Cincinnati hospital to see If his strained back muscles can’t be cooked into shape. • * * The veteran Jake Boultes, on the veteran now seetns to be making good at third base and Is likely to go even better as the season advances. • • • The big ace of the Des Moines pitching staff. Paul Musser, has just been released from the army, and there is an easier feeling now. in Dess Moines baseball circles. . . o * * * Pitcher Lou North, formerly with the St. Louis Cardinals and later with the St. Paul club, has been signed by Clarence Rowlaud to pitch for his Milwaukee Brewers. , • * No more Waxahachie for Pat Moran, says the manager of the Reds. He declares his team will train in Florida next If he is still on the Job anything to say about it,— Larry Gardner, former member of the Boston Red Sox, who was traded to the Cleveland Indians, says he never felt better and will have the greatest year of his career the coming summer

UNIFORM COUNTS

Hal Chase is once more re- ; ferred to as “the greatest first j baseman of all time,” by the ■ baseball followers of New York : city. In our national game the : greatness of any player in any : one section depends, to a large : extent, on the uniform he wears. ■ When Chase played with she : New York Americans he was the ; peer of all firstsackers; when J he left them he was tabbed as ; “gone back,” but now Chase is ; a member of the New York ; Giants and so he again becomes : “the greatest of all time.”

BALTIMORE VERDICT DOESN’T HURT GAME

Revolutionary Changes Not Forced, Only Hurried. President Heydler of Opinion That Decision of Jury Cannot Retard Development of Pastime—Baseball Will Thrive. Professional baseball, under organized control, will live on, despite the verdict obtained by the Baltimore club of the defunct Federal league. The game itself is no different today than it has ever been. The fact that a jury has ordered the powers that be to pay the Baltimore Federate a few thousand dollars has not hurt baseball as a sport and what was first looked upon as a body blow-by a great many followers of baseball affairs is now be-

President John A. Heydler.

ing considered as a mere Incident In the rather eventful history of the game. President John A. Heydler of the National league Is of this opinion. He does not believe that the decision of a jury can possibly retard the development of the pastime and he predicts a highly successful comeback for the game. Just as long as the competitive game is maintained on the same high basis that has characterized it for so many years, baseball will thrive. The fact that the fan doesn’t give two whoops about the business side of the game has often been demonstrated. The new order of things which President Ban Johnson of the American league predicts and which President Heydler suggests may come to pass, will probably work a benefit rather than a hurt to the business in the long run. _ As baseball Is now constituted, the player contract, with the reserve clause, the draft law and the agreement between leagues stands as its backbone, for despite the supposed abrogation of the-national agreement, the minor leagues are still affiliated with the majors officially. The fact that a club can keep one ball player as long as it chooses-to do so or let him out on ten days’ notice has been the* bugaboo of the gatne., A new form of contract that will satisfy most any court will be about all tluft baseball will need in the way of a change. There Is no need for dissolving the national commission because of the Baltimore verdicf.

JINX BALL DAY FOR SPEAKER

Most Miserable Game Was Played at Cleveland When He Hit Womart With Batted Ball. ■ » ( Tris Speaker has done such wonderful playing throughout his baseball career that it’s hard to tell what was his most brilliant play at the national game. ' But Spoke says he has no trouble picking out the most wretched game he ever played. It was tn Cleveland. “One day, summer before last.” says he, "the upper stands were packed with people. My firsbtime up I caught* a ball square on the end of my bat and drove it a mite a minute into that upper crowd. “It hit a woman In the head, and I cduld see. them help her out of the stand. A few minutes later I got the 4< report that she was dea<j. “The report wasn’tjhrae, but I didn’t find out uptil aftqr the game. I muffed two flies in the outfield—a new record for myself—and I struck out, helping materially to lose the game. Nobody knows what mental anguish 1 suffered tm 1 found out the truth.” ’ ,