George Warburton Lewis

“ And then, too, there was the celebrated Devil's Channel, which, according to widely circulated and much-believed stories, sucked small craft down into its omnivorous maw like some insatiable demon lying in wait.
Leanor devoted but little time to the prodigious engineering feat. After all, it was man-made, and what was man if not a purveyor to feminine caprices? Mere men were cheap. The adventuress knew, because she had bought and sold many of them. ”

“ Sisson snatched up the trailing oars and put his giant's strength against the invisible something that seemed dragging us by the keel, but all he did was to plough two futile furrows in the strange whirlpool. Our capuco glided on.
The blasé adventuress was never more beautiful. For the time, at least, life, warm and pulsating, had come back and clasped her in a joyous embrace. ”

“ The mask of allurement had fallen from the forbidding face of the artificial and empty. Life itself had become for Leanor a vacant and meaningless thing. She had seen too much of it in too brief a space. ”

“ Leanor's pretty face was radiant with expectation. Though bored of the world, there was at least one more thrill for her ahead.
Five minutes slipped by. Sisson rowed on steadily.
"There she is!" the boatman said suddenly, for the first time evincing something like a normal human interest in life. One of his huge, hairy hands was indicating an alkali spot on the face of the right-hand wall a stone's throw ahead. "Just opposite that white spot is where it always happens." ”

“ That the spurious boatman was a victim of some hopeless form of insanity I was certain when I saw him drop to his knees and extend both his great hands in evident entreaty to the woman who had stripped him of his honor and, driven him, a driveling idio-maniac, into exile. Leanor sat impassive, but the madman continued to supplicate. ”

“ Leanor also wanted to know.
"True enough," said Sisson, "but that's not unnatural. Drowning men lay hold of whatever they can and never, never turn loose. Why, I've seen the clawlike fingers of skeletons locked around sticks that wouldn't beat up a cockroach!"
"Did you say it was a relatively calm day?" I questioned the boatman idly.
"Sure. Calm as it is right now," he answered.
I observed casually that the oarsman was gazing fixedly at Leanor. Even on him, perhaps, beauty was not entirely lost. Doubtless, too, he hid heard the gossip her arrival had set going along the wharves at Batoga. ”

“ I said evenly.
"By whom are you employed?" she questioned tentatively.
"By Henry Fayne," I casually replied.
"That is the lie of an impostor," quickly asserted the woman; "Henry Fayne is dead."
She rose from the stone shelf and prepared to desert me. Anyhow, I had won my point. I had succeeded in annoying her.
But I concluded I could hardly let the matter so end, even as affecting a woman like Leanor. Nobody can afford to be openly rude.
"Wait," I said; "let's be good sportsmen. You tilted at me and I retaliated. Honors are even. Why not forget it?" ”

“ AT THE narrow gateway of Devil's Channel the water is so shallow, and there so frequently occur tiny submerged sand-bars, that only the minutest of sea craft can skim over the gleaming rifts and gain entrance. This was confirmed for the nth time when I felt the specially made keel of our tiny cayuco scrape the shiny sand in warning that we were at last entering the canyon-like waterway.
Leanor and I were both plying our splendid oarsman with well-nigh every imaginable question about the gloomy, spooky-looking channel before us.
"Aren't we nearing the place yet?" Leanor presently asked. ”

“ The boat had circled swiftly in to the center of the vortex and now spun crazily for a moment as though on a fixed pivot, like a weather-vane. Then it capriciously resumed its first tactics, only it now raced inversely in a rapidly widening circle, running well down in the water, as though from some powerful submarine attraction. ”

“ Back at Batoga that same night, in an obscure corner of the wide cool porch of the palm-environed sanitarium, Henry Fayne and Leanor, after a long heart-to-heart talk alone, agreed to forgive and forget. Later in the evening Fayne went down to the contiguous village to assemble his meager belongings. They would be interesting souvenirs with which to decorate the walls of the rehabilitated home. I found Leanor sitting where he had left her on the porch, smiling enigmatically.
"Can I act, or not?" ”

“ A Gripping, Powerful Story by a Man Who
Always Tells a Good Tale
The Blade of Vengeance
By George Warburton Lewis
THE OUTCOME was all the more regrettable because Henry Fayne had staked so much on the success of his great venture. He had renounced innumerable bachelor friendships for Leanor, only to discover within a year of the celebrated social event, which had been their wedding, that he was linked for life to a captivating adventuress. ”