Adventure Magazine Cover, October 10, 1921 — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

The Picture eye of the storm had passed over us with its temporary lull, and we were in the tail of it. The lightning played with new force, revealing the murk of the dense cloud canopy overhead. Gibbins threw his face down upon my head and I heard him screaming— ‘There it is—look!”’ THE stern was hove up and turned SQ turtle. I found myself clear of it =a and being rocked in the wild cradle of Teething waters—up-up-up, then down- down-down, till there was no more up nor down for me but just smothering helpless- ness and a roaring cataract. I lost con- sciousness. It was well after daylight when I found myself lying face down on a sandy bit of beach that had been swept by the brooms of a million devils. Mv legs were being pounded in the combers amid a tangle of the schoon- . er’s rigging. But for that I should have been combed off the beach long before and sucked out to sea by the undertow, for the breakers were still vicious, though the wind had lost its hurricane force. I was naked except for the remnants of a cotton singlet, and my body was torn and bleeding from head to foot. I had. barely enough strength left to pull myself inch by inch up the hard wet sand of the shingle. And I lay still for more than an hour. The heat of the sun gave me new life. My lower lip was swollen and cut, for I had probably sunk my teeth into it while trying to keep my mouth closed with lungs bursting for air under water. Though I was burning with fever and my tongue and throat swelling for the want of a drink, I let the sun beat upon me without making any attempt to get up or to shake the sand out of my ears and hair. When I could endure the heat no longer I began to drag mvself along the beach, well out of reach of the combers, through the litter of wreckage and burst bales of hay like heaps of kelp which ruffled the sand- spit. I found two of the Filipinos dead, and later came upon the bows of our long-boat —with a breaker of water lashed to them. I drank heavily and was well revived. I sat up and took a look round now, to see if I could recognize anything. I saw that we had come aground in a narrow in- let that was masked from the open sea by a low point of land. And in the jaw of the 37 inlet was a great rock, its top whitened by bird-droppings. By it was a cluster of palm- trees. I knew there should be something familiar about the spot, but for a time I could not remember I had ever seen the in- let before. Then I saw that the top of the rock was split, and that three of the palm-trees— made a letter N! One of them was behind the other two, but bent over almost hori- zontally—this was the spot which Captain Gibbins had been drawing but which he had never seen. But now I knew he had glimpsed it in the lightning flashes before we struck. That was what he had been yelling about and pointing out to me. It was plain now why we had never been able to find this place coasting down Luzon. Gibbins had looked for it, but it was only from inside the inlet that the rock and the trees could be seen, for the shoulder of the point hid them to anybody looking from seaward. But I was in no condition to think of such things then, nor little inclination. My head was reeling and I knew I must do two things—get out of the sun, and on the point where I would have a chance to attract the attention of some vessel which might be passing. The chance was slim enough. I dragged myself round the jaw of the inlet and went out on the point as far as I dared. My feet were sore and swollen and the rough rocks cut them, but I kept on till I got to the shade of some bushes on the seaward side. There J tied what was left of my shirt to a limb, and fainted as I lay looking up at it whipping in the wind. Late that afternoon the coastguard cut- ter Negros took me off the point. I was in good shape in a short time, and went back ashore to the scene of the wreck with the second officer in a boat. We wanted to look round, bury the dead, and get away. The inlet was quiet now, no more than the usual ground swell snoring on the beach where the Bangor Maid had struck. There was a clean sandy bottom and some patches of coral. We found no other bodies than the two I had come across. But just inside the point we found an old spar driven deep into the sand. And then, in the water, the flattened skeleton of a big ship lying on the bottom in about five fathoms. The water was clear, the sand white, and the sun striking aslant, we could see her ribs plainly enough. We went over ° cCoOmicoooks C©