Adventure Magazine Cover — page 150: what you’re looking at

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

Fay TAIN : i Pi ya won = ees ef Bay *\ Fab fea 5 2 oe 22% . ylet ae =o ee ~~ - . Pa a an, Ome A ote 8 pe See ink é p by ze Il As ae : ron VI ams 2 Le, : * a See oo : : = < oe a — Author pe “The Bosun of the Goldenhorn’s Varn,” “A Debt at Se ,’’ ete. I E Fancy Nan was at anchor, off the Howard Street wharf, San Francisco, ready for sea. Upon the wharf were gathered her crew, waiting for the boat to take them aboard. ‘The boat had gone off to the ship, taking the owner and his daughter, and was now on her way back. At the cabin table sat the owner and the skipper. Mr. Tattersall, the skipper, a thin old fish—a scarred whale bearing the marks of many years’ seafaring; appearing about to speak, but silent; his face wrinkled by the winds and weather stress of all the oceans; graying about the temples, with a small iron-gray beard and stiff mustache; his cold and penetrating eyes watching the owner with a restless expression; his large ears, pressed close against his head, as if by the everlasting winds of the sea, seeming to listen carefully both to what his owner was saying and to the sounds that came from the deck without; his hands, thin- fingered and sharp-knuckled, folded upon the table before him. Dowser, his owner, leaned across the table toward him. Dowser was bald; a stout man with folds of florid skin about his clean-shaven face; large eyes and prominently blue, with, in them, a strangely rournful expression. Unlike his six-foot skipper, a short man—his sailors calling “The Fenceless Meadows,” copyright, 1922, by B. M. Adams. him ‘‘cut off and hammered down”’ armed, with fat fingers; wearing across his vest a heavy gold watch-chain, ornamented with a row of shark’s teeth set in gold fittings; a man of advanced years, looking backward rather than forward, along life; wearing, as he faced his skipper, an expression that seemed apologetic. ‘Shoofly,”’ he said, “it’s up to you.” ‘‘Women’s out of place on a ship,” replied the other. ‘‘You know it, Dowser, or you ought to know it.’’ He stopped suddenly, adding in a low voice— “TI don't forget the old Nanette, sir.” Dowser, bowing his head, sat silent; and directly, half-rising, held out a hand. ‘“Shoofly,” he said, “you don’t think I forget? But this is different.”’ The skipper took the proffered hand and for a moment they stood with hands clasped above the table. “Mr. Dowser, I don’t forget that you are my owner—any more than I forgot that you were my skipper in the old .Vanette, sir. Orders are orders.” “T wish you’d cut out the ‘sir,’ I wish vou’d be more human.”’ Pausing a moment he added-— “T don't know how vou and Nance hit it off if vou can’t be more human.” Turning, he led the way up through the chart house to the poop. Against the taff- rail, beside the signal-halvards, leaned a Shoofly. girl, seeming, despite the skipper’s words, by no means out of place there; seeming, 142 Comiicloookks C@