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76 ABOTT'S MONTHLY with the driver. One of the fighter's favorite jokes was to ride all night in a taxi and then challenge the driver to fight for his fare. Presumably Siki put in the time immediately after midnight imbibing more liquid refreshments, for at 2:30 in the morning Patrolman John J. Meehan saw him. Siki and the policeman were acquainted, Meehan having met him at the station house, where the pugilist was a regular visitor. Meehan said the fighter had seemed a trifle unsteady on his feet, but that he immediately hailed him. "Hello," yelled the fighter. "Me go home." "You'd better keep going in that direction," counseled Meehan, and Siki, with a wave of his hand, moved off. Four hours later Meehan came to 41st street on his beat up ninth avenue. He looked up the empty street and about 100 feet from the corner saw a man lying face downward. The policeman walked over and turned him over. It was Siki! In a pool of blood he lay, two bullet wounds in his back. The policeman felt for a heartbeat, then sent for a doctor, who pronounced the man dead. The body was taken to the station house, and Mrs. Siki, or Mrs. Phal, as her real name was, was brought to the precinct to identify the body. She fainted at the sight of it. After she had recovered, she could only say that a man named Jimmie had threatened Siki for failure to pay an alleged debt of $20 for liquor. "I met my husband at seven o'clock," she said, "at the door of the house. He was going out and I was coming in. He said he was going out with the boys for a while. He said he would see me later. "He was a good boy," she sobbed. "He bought me that radio there, and we used to sit in front of it and listen. When they broadcast fights we just hugged each other when his favorite was winning. I went out to the movies that evening and he said he was going to talk with some of the boys. I didn't see him again until they brought me to the police station. "No, he didn't have no insurance. I tried to get him to do it, but he behaved so bad to the insurance agent that I gave up the idea. He said it was bad luck." Siki's manager, Bob Levy, came in to console Mrs. Siki. Levy had just arranged for Siki's appearance in a vaudeville act at the Howard Theatre in Washington. "He was tickled to death," said Levy, "and I told him I'd try to have him meet the president. It's too bad." IN a dark little room kept at tropical heat a half dozen Senegalese were gathered. They spoke only French, so they talked among themselves. "Nobody in the world is as strong as Siki," they said solemnly, looking at his photograph. They discussed the possibility of slaughtering 100 whites in Hell's Kitchen as revenge, but this was impracticable. Moslem as well as Christian prayers were recited at his funeral. The Senegalese wished to bury him as in their own country, "wrapped in clean sheets and laid in the earth without a box," as Siki's brother suggested. But Mrs. Siki decided that he should be "laid away proper." "There were two dreadful mistakes in his life," ran his eulogy. "The first was a lack of proper preparation; the second a lack of noble purpose." Without these, Siki had failed. [[line]] The Moor's Revenge (Continued from page 63) [[line]] burying the body. But the doctor must do so himself. No son of Allah could touch the defiled body of an unbeliever. In a hesitant manner Doctor Burr sought a way out of his dilemma through David. And David, with the assistance of Jeremin, found canvas and sewed up the body. Without a prayer, without a chant, they lifted it feet foremost and allowed it to slip slowly across the rail into the ocean. Doctor Burr watched his son's body sink below the waves, then he staggered back into the cabin. His face was like a colorless mask. It betrayed no feeling. He had reached the limit of his capacity to suffer. He felt that it was best that Benjamin had died; he had at least escaped from these wretches commanded by that devil on the poop. Alone now, he went over the story he would tell a shocked, civilized world. But in his meditation he realized that these men had done him no bodily injury; nor had they threatened or attempted to do him an injury. They were aloof. By simply withholding the kindly attributes common with human contacts, these men, whom in his native land he would have considered less than the boards under his feet, had inflicted upon him a misery he had never known. He, a rich son of Virginia, with a long and illustrious ancestry. He gave up thinking of his plight. He searched in his medicine kit for quinine. The kit was empty. Doctor Burr lapsed into a merciful coma. The storm which broke with such sudden fury on the El Fascid that night, snapped her mainmast between mainsail and lower main topsail; and carried three Circassians overboard. The commands of Standing Lee, the shouts of Mahasmid, all blended with the babbling shouts of excited Hindus and Moors, only to be drowned out by the roar and wail of the wind. The flashing stabs of lightning revealed to the harassed crew the dangers of the nearby reefs. But all their efforts were futile. When every sail was reefed, and the El Fascid rode with her naked spars uplifted like a dumb creature in a plea for mercy, with her rudder broken, and helpless before the wind, a great wave took her, lifted her high on its crest, then it seemed to slip from under her as it flung her shoreward; the old schooner reeled, struck a hidden reef, groaned and shook from stem to stern; the waves rushed over her in successive crushing blows. Her rolling motion at the stern caused the logs to pound her within as the waves dashed her hull against the rocks. Before the night was gone the El Fascid went to pieces. FOR many nights afterwards, David awakened from a nightmare, would stare into the blackness of his room; and see again the indomitable captain--the unforgettable Standing Lee lashing himself to the mainmast of the El Fascid after he had relented at the last moment and given orders to rescue Doctor Burr. Into the schooner's longboat they had taken the doctor while he babbled incoherently over the loss of his son. To David, death had seemed so near, had pursued them so relentlessly, until the rescue party from the lighthouse ashore had saved them. Some weeks later, commenting on the manner that Standing Lee had gone down with his ship, Jeremin for JANUARY, 1931 77 told David of the report he got that morning that the captain's body had been washed ashore. And in a pocket of his jacket was found a letter dated many months before, and wrapped around a woman's picture. The letter was from a missionary living in Norfolk: Reverend Jonathan Pleasant. Davis [[David]] was startled. He had known him when a boy. Was not Jenny, the missionary's daughter, his childhood sweetheart. Late that afternoon the two sailors found the address. They learned from the housekeeper that the missionary was abroad. He was not expected home within two years. (PART TWO) WHEN David Mobree and Jeremin Jacks returned to Norfolk three years later on an English tramp steamer, their curiosity concerning Standing Lee's friendship for the old missionary had not abated. Again they sought the little gray cottage flanked by a wide well-kept lawn on a quiet, narrow street. This time they were successful--Jonathan Pleasant was home. A small wiry man he was, with eyes that were deep set, and which looked at one with a kind of weary sadness; he had a short-cropped beard, entirely gray, which almost concealed the wrinkles of a dark olive skin that had spent many years in a torrid climate. He welcomed them in a dignified, polite manner. When David made himself known, the missionary's face brightened for a brief moment, then calmed as he fixed his eyes first on David and then on his companion. He lead them into his study. After his visitors were comfortably seated, the missionary settled himself in a heavily upholstered char by the window and sighed deeply. "I am glad you came, David." He said in his genial manner. "Yet, somehow your visit recalls memories I should rather forget." "Memories are sometimes provoking. Sometimes they make us inquire into matters which don't concern us; for instance: the friendship of yours for Standing Lee," said the sailor. The missionary betrayed his surprise in his glance. "It's not for an humble sailor like me," continued David, "to nose into your private affairs; but to learn that Standing Lee had a friend anywhere in the world was a surprise to us." "How did you learn this?" queried Pleasant. "By the letter we heard he had from you; it was found on his body; the coroner read it to Jeremin," David answered. The missionary was silent a long time, as though he regretted the words he would speak. Then from an album on the table by his chair he drew forth a small blurred photograph of a young woman. "This you may keep, David, if you wish. But the letter was the last communication between us--yes, we were friends--I'll keep it." He looked from one to the other, his fingers drumming on the leaves of the open album. David was that the photograph was of Jenny. "Abd-el Nadir--known to you as Standing Lee--was a holy man when I knew him in Morocco," he paused, noting the hint of incredulity on the faces of his visitors, "but I've never seen another man whose natural instincts were so completely transformed." "You knew him a long time?" David asked. "Yes, a long time. He was the fiance of Jenny when she died," replied Reverend Pleasant, with a note of sadness in his voice. With some difficulty David retained his composure. Though years had passed since he had claimed her as his sweetheart, his mind was filled with vivid memories, almost melancholy in a way, of long walks arm in arm with Jenny under the brooding sycamores in Lawnville before her father moved away to Virginia. Time and distance had entered into their love affair. And Jenny forgot. Forgot David and all Lawnville. But he could not forget her--vivacious, affectionate, yet headstrong and wilful, she had gone out of his life seemingly with no regrets. David, however, could not fathom the mystery of her becoming the promised bride of Standing Lee--Abd-el Nadir--a man he somehow thought of as a hater of Christians. As he listened to her father he almost doubted that he was speaking of the same man. "It all happened in Fez," said the missionary, "we had lingered five weeks in the Holy Land where Jenny met me. But in the Moroccan city we found much that was interesting. 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