Adventure Magazine Cover — page 177: what you’re looking at

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

The Fenceless Meadows nor a rope parted; the excellency of her rigging had doomed her. As she lay over, trembling in the first fury of the squall, Tattersall rushed from the chart-house, shouting—his voice carried away, lost in the night. From beneath the skids, Billings, ter- rified, rushed for the boat; seizing her stern and swarming over it; stumbling into Moses who yelled at him. “The falls! Stand by to cut the falls.” He drew his knife, and, standing at the falls, sawed them with a dull edge. As he stood there, stunned by the wind, drenched by the torrent that hissed upon him, a huge body bore him down, shouting as he fell: “The falls! Cut the falls.” Bock, seizing the falls, waited with them in his hands. The Fancy Nan, without a tremble in all her length, lay as if stunned; her spars pointing higher and higher into the night above her. Suddenly, as it had smitten her, the squall passed away, and stars shone upon the hove-down bark. The night was utterly still, save for a faint seething from leeward where the squall swept along the sea. Voices called along the deck, crying orders, shouting indistinguishable jumbles of words—every accent clear upon the death- like silence of the surrounding sea. The moon, stealing from the squall to leeward, silvered the sea, shining upon the gilded trucks and upturned golden vard- arms of the Fancy Nan; glistening all along her varnished weather rigging, and her burnished brass work; each shadow of her railing, shrouds and spars and of her white and lifeless wings standing distinct upon the decks and on the water. It was but a moment that she lay, help- less and beautiful, hove down beyond the power to rise, before, in the space of a breath, she disappeared from the spangled pathway of the moonbeams upon the mid- night sea. In the track of the moonbeams there floated a boat, alone upon the water. In her stern sheets sat Nance Dowser with Moses standing beside her, and amid- ships stood a gigantic sailor, at whose feet there crouched a narrow-faced man who whined, driveling— “They went an’ changed ’er name.”’ 169 XI Ayia DAWN came over a mirror-like sea, and Moses, taking the sail that lay ) rolled in the bottom of the boat, stretched an awning over her astern. Be- fore dawn, finding a water-beaker and a small supply of biscuits he had moved them into the stern sheets. Toward dawn Nance had fallen asleep, and now, hurrying lest the two sailors who slept outstretched in the bows should awaken, he went quietly about his business, dropping overboard pieces of a broken oar, and the hatchet that lay in the locker, and moving the oars, lashed them securely to the thwarts, aft, so that no one could move them from forward. When the men awoke he was sitting staring across the sea. Bock, awaking, stretched himself, yawn- ing, and, kicking Billings, cried— ‘Rise and shine there, you sleeper—rise and shine.”’ Billings arose, crouching in the bottom, staring over the water, searching for a sail; and, seeing nothing save the sea and the sky, turning to Moses, asked— ‘‘Wot about some eats, mister?” Moses tossed him a small package, saying— “Make it last—it’s all you'll get.” Billings, scowling at him, asked— ‘Who in made you skipper, eh?” Moses, making no reply, put his hand in- side his coat, drawing out an old pistol; and after looking at it, and across the sea, replaced it. | Billings looked at Bock, whispering— “The old , did you see that, eh?” Bock looked at the old cook, meeting his eye, silent, expressionless. ‘Wot about some water?” asked Billings; and Moses, filling a tin pannikin, set it upon a thwart amidships, saying: “That does you till tomorrow—make it last.” The pannikin held a quart. looked up at Bock, questioning. Nance, awaking, gazed about her, and, laying her head down, cried—thinking of Mr. Tattersall, and of the Fancy Nan. All day she sat silent, with wet eyes; Moses passing her food, telling her to eat. “We'll be picked up pretty soon, miss,” he said. As night fell he whispered to her: “Stay awake a while, miss, and watch for Billings GO 1INOO <S) (C@ iin