Adventure Magazine Cover — page 84: what you’re looking at

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

Re a, —s. + ey. we -. 2 J ~ * oT PEE ST East enh - a , ‘4 vov2z—. At The Tarn , by Roy P Churchill <x 1 | | 1 | — J ty Author of “Inside and Outside,” “The Makings of a Sailorman,”’ etc. HE Falcons were a queer lot. To begin with, there were not many of them, being usually single sons of single sons, and in their mode of life one family trait stood out as almost a law to the name. Jim Falcon’s grandfather, a captain under Grant and a waster and a spendthrift, had come home a private, thrown away care- lessly what was left of his father’s money and at middle age settled in a rich valley to gather unto himself finally hundreds of fat acres. ~ Jim’s father had taken this inheritance and scattered it as became the family tradition, beginning close to forty as a section-laborer and ending in his own pri- vate car. Young Jim took the bonds and railroad stocks and the mortgages and played with them as a small boy does with tin soldiers, mauling and destroying the lot as so many outgrown playthings. So that when the new steel cargo-freighter Lotus steamed out between the Capes bound from Norfolk to Buenos Aires with coal, he was berthed in her forecastle and down in her log as an able seaman, instead of in the captain’s cabin, where certain master’s licenses, now —_ = forfeited, might have placed him had he not been true to his trait. By diligent attention to detail, and with rather more outlets for his father’s money than others of his name, Jim Falcon reached forty some years before his time. In fact, he had just turned thirty-four in actual years when the Lotus made up her first day’s run. The crew of the Lotus marked the high tide of need and the low tide of material in American shipping. A coarse, grumbling, ill-dispositioned lot with a good sprinkling of green hands, demanding much and giving little. And with them Jim Falcon belonged and mixed as easily as a hand fits into a well-worn pocket. “A bunch of tough birds, captain,” re- ported “Kinky” Braune, the first mate. “I’d like to have a free hand with them, if we’re - to get anywhere toward discipline.” = i 4 . > . a | = “Go asfar as you like,” said Captain Melvin McRae. “I can see what you'll have to contend with.” Captain McRae thought himself fortu- nate in having the thick-chested, bull- necked mate, for only iron could impress the hard men of his crew, and Kinky Braune was that kind.