Adventure Magazine Cover — page 155: what you’re looking at

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

on the rail behind him and whistled the engine- “Miller?” he screeched down the tube when the engineer answered. ‘You fellows stand by down there with a full head of steam. We're dragging like fury and have got to get out of here in half an hour or go ashore. Get her good _ and hot, Miller; we’ll need every ounce of steam > you can'pour into her. Watch your signals close.” Just as he turned away from the tube some- body came jumping up the bridge ladder, a big sea right on his heels. It was this Devil Jackson I told you about, a man on his way to Ports- mouth Naval Prison to serve an eight-year term at hard labor. “T've restored myself to duty for the time, on an’ I’ll do anything I can,” he yelled at the pper. The skipper curled his lip. “You’re a prisoner ahoses this ship, Jackson, and a prisoner you'll stay as long as you’re aboard,” the skipper says. “I got enough real men to do what I want done. You get below and stay there.” He brushed past Jackson and went stumbling down the ladder and was lost in the darkness. Jackson lurched over beside me. “This old tub’s in a of a tight hole, - Daniel,’ he said, holding to my arm. ‘‘What’s his nibs goin’ to do to get her out, eh?” Well, there we were all in the same boat so to speak, and as Jackson truly said in a tight hole. At a time like that when you don’t know how much longer you’ve got to live you haven’t got it in you to hold any man a grudge. Bad as Jackson was I felt sorry for him; if we had to go he’d have a lot more to answer for than me. 7 “We're going to run for it, Devil, the Lord willing,” I says. ‘The old man’s gone below to see about slipping the -bitter-end in the locker.” “Don’t the —— fool know it’ll take an hour to get. that chain away from that three-inch holding-bolt!” he snapped. ‘This old barge will be splinters on the beach before they can get that chain loose. There’s a shackle out there on the forecastle if I know the length of that chain. Whyn’t he send a man down there to knock the pin out?” “The devil take you, man! It can’t be done,” I says. He stood there looking down at the foaming forecastle for a minute or so. “The devil take me, Daniel! be done,” he says. He left me and went down the ladder. I clung to the rail where I was, me and my two men, looking down at the spinning water on the forecastle by the light of the searchlight. It fascinated me. I’d never seen anything like it before, and I never want to again. It was a sight to make you shiver. But it might The Devil a Man Would Be ABOUT ten minutes passed. That roaring’ sound astern, plain as plain could be to the ears now, was getting It was the as louder and louder all the time. 145, wicked surf crying for us. Half an hour the » skipper allowed to get the end of the chain away from the holding-bolt.. Once I imagined I felt the little girl bump when she fell down in the deep hollow between two seas, and she might have hit bottom. That was to be expected, what with the continual dragging of the anchor through the loose sand. So we stood there watching and waiting, them warm. Then the skipper came up on the bridge where he’d be ready and said he’d set the blacksmith to work cold-chiseling the holding-bolt in the chain locker. : “Tt’s nip and tuck whether we win or lose, Wetmore,” he yelled into my ear. “Lose, I think. We’d better have some headway to help out.” He whistled the engine-room again and asked how it was with them down there. They were. r , so he gave the signal for half speed ahead, The chain slacked a little, but not much. Which went to show that even with full speed ahead we wouldn’t make more than two knots an hour, if that. Maybe nothing at all if the sea was worse outside than it was there. The sea ran out from under her and she struck something that jarred us. “Bottom, sir,’’ I says. But the skipper paid me no attention. He was leaning over the forward bridge rail staring down at the forecastle with popping eyes. I looked where he was looking, and there was a man, on hands and knees, crawling out along that. raging forecastle toward the eyes here where we’re sitting this minute. “Hey, you fool, get back there!’’ I screamed at him through my cupped hands. I felt the skipper’s hand tight on my arniand looked at him. “Tt’s Jackson,” he says. chance in a thousand.” Yes, it was this Devil Jackson, the man with an eight-year term in prison hanging over his head. He had twe heavy grate-bars fastened to his middle and a pair of lead-soled diver’s shoes on his feet. There was a hammer in one hand and a chisel in the other. Weight, you understand, to help him against the pull of the seas that washed over him. : We watched him and said nothing. Watched him crawl inch by inch along that smothered deck, dodging the seas, flattening himself when they came. As each one buried him we waited “He’s- got one anxiously for it to clear, wondering # he’d be there yet. And he was, which goes to show that thereis a God who can keep a man alive against impossible odds. It wasn’t very hopeful.’ (EO) NOOK beating first one hand and then the other against 3 the bridge rail to knock off the ice and keep (C©) im