Adventure Magazine Cover — page 125: what you’re looking at

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

Wrecks of the Long Island Coast Place were close reefed, with the excep- tion of the foresail, which was so stiff with ice that it could not be handled by the sail- ors. The thermometer on one of the deck- houses at this time registered two degrees below zero. As the heavy seas drenched over the forward part of the schooner they froze to everything they touched, clogging sheets and halyards with ice, freezing anchors and cables solid, and hampering the steerage- way of the vessel by forming great masses on her bows which made it almost impossi- ble to control her. Through the day and night all hands were kept on watch ready for emergency, while the vessel labored nearly helpless in the bitter tempest. On the morning of the sixth she was discovered to be leaking, and Captain Squires realized that the situation was grave. He held the craft as well as possible to her course, and on the next day she met the full fury of the hurricane, which added the last touches to her desperate condition. Mist shut in thick and snow began to drive along the wind in blinding sheets. Under the merest rag of a sail the vessel pitched before the gale until early on the morning of the eighth. By this time her crew were in a helpless condition, tottering about the decks, worn out from sleepless watching -and dulled by the fearful cold. With no observations in four days, Captain Squires had lost all track of his whereabouts, and was holding the vessel before the wind, trusting to fate to keep her clear of trouble. The black hours of early morning gave way to a wild dawn of wind-lashed seas and intense cold and revealed the Place a help- less hulk, ice-covered from topmasts to waterline, her rigging frozen solid, her sails like sheets of iron, as she drove soggily at the mercy of the blast. There was but one thing left to do. Cap- tain Squires believed his ship to be near Sandy Hook. If the water was not too deep he could anchor and chance riding out the storm. He cast the lead and found eight fathoms. Then he called the crew aft, told them his intention, gave eacha double portion of grog, and sent them for- ward to the cables. But the ice had bound theanchors so deep that, try as they might in their weak- ened condition, the men could not chop them out, and after futile attempts the Cap- 88I tain called them aft again. Realizing now that the prospect was hopeless, he told them to shift for themselves, and each man made what few preparations he could to meet the disaster which all knew could not be far distant. THEY had not long to wait. Lift- C3 ing above the rush of the gale, the crash of breakers soon came from ahead, and the sound told all that their fate was at hand. A moment later the - Place lay hammering across the bar just east of the Lone Hill Life-Saving Station on Great South Beach, Long Island Coast. Gigantic waves combed her decks from stem to stern, and her crew fled to the shrouds for their lives. The life-savers of the Lone Hill Station had gone eastward earlier in the morning to assist the men of the Blue Point Station in landing the crew from another schooner which had stranded during the night. Con- sequently there was no one at Lone Hill save one man, Surfman Saunders, who had been left on guard. Hardly had the Place struck, when she was discovered by Saun- ders. He telephoned the Blue Point Sta- tion immediately, then called the Point o’ Woods Station to the west. In five minutes the Lone Hill and Blue Point crews, having finished with the wreck of the first schooner, were fighting their way back westward in the face of the hurricane, making every effort to reach the scene of the latest disaster as soon as possible. From the west the Point o’ Woods crew, helped by the gale behind them, were hurrying eastward with their gun and life-boat on sleds. The Place lay three hundred yards from the beach on the outer bar, giant gray seas sweeping half way up her masts as they broke astern of her. At times she was in- visible in the scud and the leaden rush of the snow. Through lulls in the storm the life-savers on the beach could occasionally catch glimpses of her crew in the port miz- zen rigging where they were clinging for their lives. There appeared to be eight in all. Two stood on the crosstrees, six in the shrouds. The three life-saving crews faced a critical situation. Two of them were well nigh worn out by hours of battling in the terrible weather at the first wreck. The dragging of heavy surf-boats and beach apparatus COmiclbook ©