Adventure, January 20, 1922 — page 143: what you’re looking at

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

Snappy ’s Promotion an officer who had commandeered a ladder was shouting instructions to a Filipino mess-attendant who seemed to fear to make the one effort that night save him. Suddenly, just above him, he heard a shout of warning, and the next instant a large oblong hatch-grating struck the water a few feet from his head, and then, skipping on the water like a great, flat stone, it struck a white-uniformed officer fairly in the back of the head. The man gave a horrible groan, turned over, and started to sink. Snappy reached the sinking man with two powerful strokes, caught him in the hair with his left hand, and keeping the blood- stained face above the water, swam des- perately toward the wooden grating. With an effort he got the officer on the grating and swam, pushing it before him, as far from the sinking vessel as his weakened condition would permit, and then, pulling himself up on the grate with the other man, swooned from his loss of blood. ee LHE trickling of cold water in his # face brought Snappy back to con- sciousness, and he remembered quite distinctly the terrible events of the past few hours. There was a dull sickening pain in his head, and he opened his eyes with difficulty. One glance of his experienced eyes showed him that he was lying on a hammock mattress which was spread on the quarter-deck of an American destroyer. On every side of him other wounded men were stretched upon the deck, with here and there an officer or a hospital steward bend- ing over them. Snappy was stretched close to ‘the rail and the first glance to seaward awarded him only by a vast amount of floating wreckage, floating ditty-boxes, mess-tables, wooden hatch-grates, spars, and miscel- laneous pieces of lumber of varying sizes and shapes; but the great cruiser—their home—had passed below the waves and from the sight of men forever. Something stirred at his shoulders and he turned his head slowly, painfully. What he saw was a white-uniformed officer stand- ing at his head, peering down kindly into his pale face. Indeed, it was more than just an ordinary officer of the line—it was the skipper himself. Already he was speak- ing, and Snappy closed his eyes wonderingly. “Lie still, Snappy—just take it easy for 14 awhile,” he was saying. ‘‘You’ve got a bad cut in your head—not dangerous, but painful.” Snappy eyes opened. He stared unbe- lievingly. Why, the old man must be plumb nutty. There he was—forgetting all dis- tinctions of naval caste, actually on agree- able, even human, terms with an enlisted man. It was absolutely too much for one time, and Snappy began to file the puzzling incident away for future reference, and a clearer mind. - It would all make a first- rate yarn to spin to a life-boat’s crew during some long, monotonous watch. A question from the skipper, point-blank, snapped him out of the dream. “How in thunder did you get out of the brig, Snappy? I didn’t know that the master-at-arms was killed by the first explosion until it was too late to send a man back on board to try to save you. At that time it would have been sending a man to his death. Then when we saw you it was like seeing a ghost—thought you had gone down with the ship.” Snappy smiled reminiscently, and then in short, broken sentences, emphasized by an occasional wincing of the facial muscles, he told the gray-headed skipper of the ill-fated cruiser the story of his last-min- ute rescue by the courageous Mosquito. Throughout the narrative the skipper smiled thoughtfully, shaking his head ap- provingly as Snappy concluded. “Don’t you remember anything after that?—after you were in the water?”’ ‘Well, I remember that I was pretty near all in, and that somebody heaved a big hatch grating from the ship. I guess I remember that because it barely missed me and knocked an officer coo-coo. I got him as he was goin’ down, put him on the wooden grating and pushed it ahead of me until I thought we were safe from the suction of the sinkin’ ship. Then I crawled on the grating on top of the officer—that’s the last I remember.”’ “You don’t remember then who the officer was?”’ the skipper queried. “No, sir—I’m‘sorry.”’ “Well, coxswain, I’m not. was myself.” Snappy stared doubtfully. For a time neither spoke and then Snappy queried fearfully: “Have you seen him—Mosquito? Was he saved? That officer CGO LDOOLK = a Eo