Adventure Magazine Cover — page 196: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

V FILL you, then, let us know whenever YY you have difficulty in getting your ~ “copy of Adventure? Get the dealer’s side of it first and give us the main points of the situation. cate the important points and don’t forget to be specific so we can locate the dealer Your own judgment will indi- by name or exact location or address. Ad- venture appears on the 3rd and 18th of every month; of course the supply will be lower, perhaps exhausted, by the 2nd or r7th, so it is important that you should give us the date of your visit to the news- stand. And will you let us know if you find a district anywhere in which Adventure is not on sale? If you know any one who would carry it, that will help all the more. In short, if you will give us any tips that occur to you on how to perfect our dis- tribution of the magazine we'll be very grateful to you indeed and these tips will certainly get the fullest and most careful consideration. We can hardly ask you to write specially for this purpose, though it will be appreciated if you do, but thousands of you are writing in on other accounts and you could tack on a paragraph or two on this subject. Write it to me personally or to any of us or just to the magazine, but time in handling will be saved if you write direct to J. J. Crowley, Director of News- stand Sales. HAT’S the favor I want to ask—your friendly cooperation in getting Ad- venture to wherever there is a demand for - it. And if it isn’t convenient to grant the favor, we'll be just as good friends as we were before. As I said at the beginning, - I’d not like to ask this favor if it were a case of any other magazine, but Adzenture’s readers have proved their real friendship for “our magazine.” I know I have a friend’s right to ask a favor, and you know you have a friend’s right to grant it or not, as you see fit, knowing it will be all right ~ either way. AN extremely interesting reply to Edgar Young’s call for information on “King John.” Surely a call at our Camp-Fire _ goes out over all the world and in some nook or cranny, near or distant, is very likely to find at least one man who can answer. And I’ve an idea there will be some more ___ responses before we’re through. - ‘Lindoap, California. = , In answer to an ingility in the October Adventure with regard to King John The man who is once and again heard of under that name was at one time bosun’s mate upon the Liverpool four-mast barque Silberhorn. ‘The Silber- horn was abandoned at sea some fourteen years or so ago, on fire. She was sighted by an Iquique bound ship some eighty miles sonsiliveras of Robinson Crusoe Island; and a search later carried out for her ship’s comeiny was fruitless. The fate of the old Silberhorn has nothing to do with King John, how- ever. HIS man’s real name was Reuben Sweeny; and ~ he was an immense Liverpool Irishman. There was certainly no Spanish blood in him at all. He was vety fair and had remarkably deep blue eyes. He was a foremast hand on the Pyrrhenes, a full rigger that took fire at sea when bound from ’Frisco for a European port. They ran her to Pitcairn Island and on arriving there found that the sea was too high for them to be able to beach her and so, with. the ship a smoldering mass beneath hatches and with her deckS on the point of breaking out at any . moment, they decided to make for Manga Reeva Island, some three hundred miles or so away. The only way that they were able to procure provisions — at all was by passing a line under one or other of the men and lowering him into the lazaret, where he groped for whatever he could lay his hands upon in the darkness and smoke. The men who made the dive into the lazaret were as often as not hauled back to deck unconscious from the smoke. One man who seemed to be quite unaffected by - the heat and smoke was Reuben Sweeny, and the mate, as he returned to the deck on one occasion said to him, “Sweeny, if you weren’t Irish you d ought to have been king of all the niggers.” Sweeny, who was black as any negro and nearly naked, replied with an oath: “By mister, it’s quittin’ the sea that I’m thinkin’ “of and maybe it’s a nigger emperor I'll be.” ‘THE Pyrrhenes was at ‘length beached at Manga — Reeva, where the crew found the natives almost starving and where there was no food for them. Fortunately in a few days a small schooner took them off. When they lay upon her decks at night there was barely room for a man to put his foot down. They sailed thus for a few days and then had the good fortune to fall in with a steamer bound from the Colonies to ’Frisco and were.taken aboard her. If I remember aright it was the Sierra—either her or the Sonoma or Ventura of the same line. They arrived in ’Frisco just a day or two before the Szlberhorn sailed from there, bound around the ~ Horn for Falmouth for orders. And a number of the crew of the Pyrrkenes shipped with her, among them being Reuben Sweeny. ‘TAs man had two cronies named Tom Swift and Bloody Quayle. ‘The three of them used to be well known from one end of the world to the. other in all the joints along the waterfront. They were all Liverpool Irish and a fighting, cursing, hell- raising trio, I made a passage at one time with Tom Swift and Sweeny and Quayle from the Columbia to Antwerp. With them in the lead, the crew muti- nied at sea, and we had for a while quite a cheery time of it. . eo, ~ * hae se ate , * hc ae “ \ 7 atid “'\ - = gS a = > ae a Sar : so , os oe -& — ee = + ala sate ‘ 4) Urey Von lah) A ae be by ¥ peta eS Ras I 1, Pid rf