Adventure Magazine Cover, October 10, 1921 — page 64: what you’re looking at

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

54 The discovery was made one night by ac- cident. We were about ten miles off the Zambales coast with a steady breeze on our starboard quarter. We were making a northerly course so as to get Point Bolinao abeam before we rounded in for Lingayen Gulf. I was standing against the taffrail. A Filipino named Manuel had the.wheel, and he was a good helmsman, too. I happened to be watching a star dead ahead, low on the horizon and snugged up against the fore- mast. I’m sure Manuel had been making a good course till he began to give the schooner a slow lee-wheel that hauled her in at least three points for the land. There was no moon and the coast was a black blur on our starboard beam. I leaped forward and grabbed the spokes of the wheel, as Manuel began to mutter something. I looked at the compass—and instead of finding him off his course, the lubber line was at North! And now the loom of the land was dead ahead. But I swung the schooner’s head to sea, and got the same star I had been watching before so that it crowded the foremast. I kept my eye on the compass, and to my amazement it swung westerly three points after a few minutes and was again at North. - Well, if the sky had been overcast and the and not visible, steering by compass we would have piled up on the coast of Luzon. Manuel was still spluttering something about how the compass had fooled htm, _ and I told him not to mind, and he took the wheel again. Captain Gibbins, in pajamas, stuck his head up through the companion and asked what was wrong. : “The compass fell off three points, sir— easterly—and then swung back again. In no time we’d be climbing the land, with that sort of a how-de-do.”’ He came up and watched the compass a few minutes, but I felt that he was neither impressed by what I had told him, nor wor- ried. But he kept rubbing his head. I sus- pected that he had seen we were off course by the telltale compass in his cabin. | ‘Have you been asleep?” I asked. ‘“No—can’t sleep,” he said, and sighed deeply, as if he were in pain. “That’s too bad, sir.” He stooped and started down the com- panion. “Come below a minute,” he said, and I Adventure followed him into the cuddy. He went into his cabin and came out with a pad and pen- cil, gave me one of his queer looks and turned up the swinging lamp over the cuddy table. He sat down, made a motion with his hand to me to take the chair across from him, and I dropped into it, wondering what he was up to.. He seemed to be half asleep yet his eyes were bright—too bright, perhaps—and had the look of fever in them. He glanced about the cuddy into the-mov- ing shadows as if he expected to see some- thing which he knew was not there. Presently he picked up the pencil and held it on the pad. He looked at the bulk- head behind me, as if he were thinking out what he was going to write. “Are you sure you want me, sir?” I asked, feeling a bit creepy about his looks and that peculiar set stare of his right over my shoulder. “Sit still,” he said, in a droning kind of a way, without shifting his eyes from the bulk- head. ‘“There’s nothing to be scared about. I never let the others see this—and-when I told ’em, they didn’t like it. You know all about it, I guess. I’m going to draw a pic- ture—anyhow, I feel like I always do when it comes—there—watch!”’ His hand began to move slowly across the paper, and the pencil made faint lines on it. Gibbins’s eyes were on the pencil now, and he watched its progress with unwinking stare. His hand moved with a circular mo- tion, but not always did the pencil touch the paper—it seemed to lift at times. Slowly his hand moved round and round, drawing what looked to me from across the table meaningless lines and curves. After a few minutes the pencil stopped. “There it is!’ said Gibbins, and handed the paper over to me. ‘‘Ever seen that place?” 1 IT TURNED my head so as to get the swaying lamp above at the right seal angle. Still, I could make nothing of the faint lines on the paper. I stood up and held it close to the lamp. Then I saw that the lines and curves made a picture. There was a line which marked a beach, a big rock beyond with its top split open, and nearby a cluster of palm trees. Three of the trees were plain enough—and one of them crossed two, in such way that the group made a crude N, or perhaps nearer an H, for the crossing tree was bent over so as to be almost horizontal. NOOK C@