The Cruise of the Pelican

By H. BEDFORD-JONES
Author of The Kasbah Gate, Splendour of the Gods, etc.
London: HURST & BLACKETT, LTD., PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C.
1924
Contents
Chapter

The Cruise of the Pelican
Tom Dennis sat on a printer's stool beside a very dirty window which dimly illumined his figure, and stared at the gloom surrounding him. His rawboned face was dejected; his angular body slumped despondently. In his hand was a little sheaf of papers.
It was five-thirty in the afternoon. Long since, the grist of evening papers had gone through the big press; the rollers had been washed and retired; the men had gone home. It was Saturday night, and the week's work was done. So was The Marshville Clarion , as Tom Dennis cheerlessly admitted to himself.
The high-school lad who assisted Dennis in gathering local items and filling the columns of The Clarion had not returned as usual from the Saturday baseball game to write up his notes from a fresh memory. Dennis had instructed him not to return until Monday—and not to return then unless sent for.
Silence and the darkness of departing day lay funereally upon the big back room. Presses and stones and type-racks filled the floor. Always dingy and dark, this room now seemed to feel the approach of dissolution. The smell of printing-ink hung upon the air like incense strewn by dead hands. The Clarion had issued its own obituary.