Adventure Magazine Cover — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

‘WEBB "JOHN HE freighter Hawk lay hove to a Ai half-mile off the southern coast of Haiti, with her bow headed to- ward the opening between Capes Jacmel and Marechaux. She rolled easily in the long swell made by the moderate breeze that tempered the heat of the noon- day sun and sent streamers of smoke shore- ward from the little vessel’s stack. On the ship’s bridge, Captain McGuire, a trim little man with a hard mouth, black hair and deep-set biack eyes, stood rolling a cigaret in the lee of the weather cloth. He finished his cigaret, lighted it, and gazed shoreward. The mate, a lean, dried-up State-o’- Mainer, spat disgustedly to leeward. He replaced his pipe in his mouth, pulled the vizor of his cap over his eyes, and moved over beside the captain. : Ahead of the Hawk, between the capes, a three-masted schooner was working its way into Jacmel harbor. The third mate, bracing himself beside the engine-room telegraph in the center of the bridge, waited patiently for the order to send the ship ahead. The helmsman, his weather eye on the captain, hung limply over his wheel. “Black Michael and the Gannet, ain’t it?”’ asked the mate, squinting at the schooner ahead. The captain nodded. “Takes ’is dang time,” muttered the mate. ‘Shall I give ’im a couple o’ toots 0’ the whistle, captain?” | Again the little captain nodded. — Author of “The Man For the Job,” “Going Home!” etc. “Wake him up,” he said shortly. The mate went to the whistle lever and gave a series of short angry blasts. The schooner, with no sign that she had heard, continued her slow passage into the harbor. “Slow ahead, Captain Mac?” suggested the mate after a while. “Make it half-ahead, mister,” said the captain over his shoulder. “‘Half-speed ahead, sir,” answered the third mate, and he placed the pointer of the indicator on ‘“‘Half-ahead.”’ A bell jangled in answer, the ship began to forge slowly ahead; the helmsman shifted his wheel to keep the ship headed toward the opening between the capes. “Haiti” is an Indian word, and means “mountains.”’ Jacmel harbor is merely a gorge, a passage in the mountains open to the sea. Although but two miles in length and something less in width, it has the dis- tinction of being one of the deepest harbors in the world, perhaps the deepest of its size. The Hawk steamed steadily in, changed to “Slow ahead”’ when abreast of Cape Jacmel, passed Marechaux, and dropped anchor on a twenty-fathom bank southwest of the town. The Gannet, farther inshore, was be- ing moored bow and stern, to prevent her swinging in the limited anchorage space when the wind shifted or died. The master of the schooner, a huge black- bearded man, dressed in khaki and with a faded blue cotton handkerchief knotted about his thick neck, came to the poop and scowled up at the bridge of the Hawk. comicloool< ©