Adventure, January 20, 1922 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

24 of infinite satisfaction crept across her comely face. “So Edward Davies sails a lone traverse, for all the show of company!’ she muttered to herself. ‘Then if Nell Clark can help to make John Cook’s venture even more hazardous than Steve Carr will make it, we may yet see Edward an English _lord- ling in’s turreted castle in England, rolling in riches and honors, like the traitor Morgan; and—who knows?—mayhap ’twill be Mistress Nell who, resuming her girlish guise, dangles a bunch o’ keys at girdle and és She concluded her day-dream with an abrupt, harsh laugh, and a vicious slap at the tops of her high leathern boots—man’s boots; the boots of a pirate. A SCANT sight of Dominica’s south ‘end; a leg on the other tack which brought a glimpse of Mar- tinique’s high northern end; then a mid- night black as Erebus fell upon-the white sloop, bringing with it a screaming squall which forced her to run fair for the mid- channel between the two islands. And in the third quarter of the middle watch, when sevenscore chilled and hungry pirates hung on to whatever security they might find on her streaming decks, avoid- ing the thunderous, noisome hold-and mis- named rest out of sheer terror for thetr miserable lives, the half-drunken lookout in the cross-trees—half-drunk because no man sober could hang on in the situation— cupped his grimy hands and bawled with the voice of Tempest itself:- “Ship ahead! Ahoy; on deck! Up hellum, up hellum! Oh, mother! She’s upon ye! Blast Davies leaped to the tiller and surged it across the deck with all the power of his sinewy frame. But the lookout’s cry was halted; the helm acted too late; a gigantic bulk loomed out of the blackness, towering over the low sloop like a cliff, and the roar of a thousand cataracts boomed out. of sails and sea-crushing bows as a great ship smashed into the white sloop fair amid- ships and cut her to the vitals. Frightened cries pealed from the towering hull; a lantern glimmered along her high bulwarks and hung down her side, while swarthy faces peered into the blackness. A vague patch of blacker darkness showed them where lay the victim of their onset, Adventure and out of the blackness rose a frightful chorus of swearing humanity which soon pierced the hazy intelligence of the ship’s officer of the deck. “Tis a Don!” yelled a pirate, catching sight of the peering faces above him as his own craft fell apart under his feet. “Tis our new ship, lads!” roared Davies leaping into the ship’s forechains as he uttered the cry and extending a hand to Nell. “Up wi’ ye, bold rovers! Ye take the ship or sink, ye!” Like a surging tide the pirates nearest the ship poured over her high bulwarks at Davies’ heels, while astounded Spaniards, not yet fully awake, stared dumbly at the foremost of them all, high-booted, cutlas- armed, whose long hair streamed in the gale behind her. # “To the poop, Nell!’ Davies roared, dash- . ing along the wet decks and bounding up the ladder to face a panic-stricken Spanish A score of the pirates remained in the fore- chains, aiding their fellows to clamber aboard out of the heavy-running seas; the rest faced about and drove the cowering crew to the forecastle, where they made a half-hearted stand at the shrill entreaty of the captain, who came running in his night clothes along the squall-swept decks, while from the poop Davies took running shots at him to speed him. “Clap ’em below, bullies!’ Davies cried. “Batten ’em down. - They’ll make a man apiece to work ship presently.” The ship had been taken with such un- believable ease that in any other moment but the midst of a screaming squall Davies might have looked for trickery. Now he was too elated at his easy transition from a wrecked sloop to a stout ship to do aught but see that his acquisition was brought through the brief storm in safety. Her Spanish crew had snugged her down with all the cautious finality of the Don; the ship was so safely shortened as to sail that she barely stemmed the seas, and in the blackness Davies knew that at any minute might come a hail from a sister trader or man-o’-war convoy ship asking if all were well. He took his whistle and shrilled a sum- mons. “Away aloft!” he yelled above the gale. “Shake out the reefs in th’ tops’ls! Handy, lads! The squall passes, and the Don sailed not alone, Ill wager.” CoOnnicloool< (E@