Adventure Magazine Cover — page 107: what you’re looking at

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

Lights of Peace in hand. And there I bumped full into the captain’s orderly, and sent him sprawling; but the kid was so excited that he didn’t have any breath to lose. He thrust a mes- sage into my hand and I gave him the one I had just received. ““*‘What—’ I began, but he guessed my question. “We're getting ready to go into action!’ he yelled back over his shoulder as he dashed for the bridge. ‘And darned if he wasn’t right! wine “All about on deck there was the Sau orderly rush of men galvanized into efficient movement. They were shipping our battery of six-pounders, while ammunition-hoists were clanking as they brought up food for the little spit-firers. Boat crews were getting their craft ready to be swung outward and cut loose when the time came, for no ship goes into action with more wood about her decks than is neces- sary. Wood makes splinters, you see. Everything else about our superstructure that was movable was being stowed below. “Clearly, my place was at my instru- ments, so back to the wireless-room I went. “From a port-hole I saw that we were swinging in between the two great moun- tains which guard the entrance to Honak. The strange wireless spark that had troubled me suddenly grew louder. With never a slackening of speed we swung around the jutting elbow that shelters the inner anchor- age from the sea, and as we did so, I heard our bugler sound ‘to quarters!’ “T craned my neck farther out of the port, and so help me, if there, hove to just inside the anchorage, wasn’t a waspish- looking destroyer, broadside on. This was the ship whose spark I had been hearing. No other vessel was in sight. “She was a muddy gray and small, but speed stood out all over her. So far as I could see she carried but two small rapid- firers and a torpedo-tube fore and aft. Smoke curled lazily from her four funnels. She flew no flag. “No sooner “did we come in sight than the men who had been idling about her decks jumped into activity. Over the water came the faint notes of a bugle, echoing from the darkening shadows of the hills about. “On we went, until not more than four hundred yards separated us from the 7 97 stranger. Then we stopped, and I heard our skipper hail. “ “This is not an international port,’ he called. ‘I must request you to leave at once.’ “The destroyer’s dapper little commander was disposed to argue. He dallied, pro- tested, and invoked treaties and ‘sentle- men’s agreements.’ Then I heard our cap- tain bark through his megaphone again. ““ ‘Get: under way in five minutes or we shall open fire!’ “It was bold language. If Captain Mil- lete made good his threat it meant war with a world power, for although the de- stroyer flew no flag, she didn’t need to. And war had not been declared. More- over, we were but a coastguard cutter; an insignificant ship with a battery of mere pop-guns, and while the destroyer had even fewer guns than we, she had torpedoes, one of which would have -obliterated us. And yet there we lay, stripped to our decks, our battle-flag. at the main-peak, even as the M’Culloch had been with Dewey at Manila.” Harmon paused, and gazed silently at the dark line of the shore to the eastward. “And what did the destroyer do?” I urged. “She quit,” replied Harmon = shortly. “By the time the five minutes were up the smoke was belching from her funnels and she was quietly slipping toward the en- trance. “They passed within a hundred yards of us, a sinister, snake-like thing in the gathering gloom, and as they did so their captain made a mock obeisance. ““*Au revoir!’ he called, a sneer in his voice. ‘Perhaps we shall return. Then— look out!’ “Captain Millete spat over the side. *¢ «her! he growled ‘I’d like to riddle her shell with six-pounders!’ “Right on her heels we followed until we reached the outer entrance. There we stopped. On went the destroyer until she was beyond the three-mile limit. We marked her Itghts as she veered around and hove to. “T slippedon the receivers again, and heard the destroyer’s rough spark sounding over and over a call. Her operator stopped to listen, then began calling again. Captain Millete appeared at the door. ““The destroyer is trying to get some one, sir,’ I reported. a” comichbook Se ee nee (E@)