Oleg Volk
Moderator Emeritus
From Jack London's The Terrible Solomons. I read it at age ten and it still makes me smile.
Bertie talked with Captain Malu in the smoking room, confiding to him his intention of seeing life red and bleeding in the Solomons. Captain Malu agreed that the intention was ambitious and honorable. It was not until several days later that he became interested in Bertie, when that young adventurer insisted on showing him an automatic 44-caliber pistol. Bertie explained the mechanism and demonstrated by slipping a loaded magazine up the hollow butt.
"It is so simple," he said. He shot the outer barrel back along the inner one. "That loads it and cocks it, you see. And then all I have to do is pull the trigger, eight times, as fast as I can quiver my finger. See that safety clutch. That's what I like about it. It is safe. It is positively fool-proof." He slipped out the magazine. "You see how safe it is."
As he held it in his hand, the muzzle came in line with Captain Malu's stomach. Captain Malu's blue eyes looked at it unswervingly.
"Would you mind pointing it in some other direction?" he asked.
"It's perfectly safe," Bertie assured him. "I withdrew the magazine. It's not loaded now, you know."
"A gun is always loaded."
"But this one isn't."
"Turn it away just the same."
Captain Malu's voice was flat and metallic and low, but his eyes never left the muzzle until the line of it was drawn past him and away from him.
"I'll bet a fiver it isn't loaded," Bertie proposed warmly.
The other shook his head.
"Then I'll show you."
Bertie started to put the muzzle to his own temple with the evident intention of pulling the trigger.
"Just a second," Captain Malu said quietly, reaching out his hand. "Let me look at it."
He pointed it seaward and pulled the trigger. A heavy explosion followed, instantaneous with the sharp click of the mechanism that flipped a hot and smoking cartridge sidewise along the deck.
Bertie's jaw dropped in amazement.
"I slipped the barrel back once, didn't I?" he explained. It was silly of me, I must say."
He giggled flabbily, and sat down in a steamer chair. The blood had ebbed from his face, exposing dark circles under his eyes. His hands were trembling and unable to guide the shaking cigarette to his lips. The world was too much with him, and he saw himself with dripping brains prone upon the deck
"Really," he said, ". . . really."
"It's a pretty weapon," said Captain Malu, returning the automatic to him.
