Adventure Magazine Cover, October 30, 1924 — page 88: what you’re looking at

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

78 strain of watching the struggle. Another A.B. now tried to keep the ship’s nose headed into the storm. That was all there was to do. IV TWENTY-FOUR hours later the | skipper, pale and sick, and horribly ‘* dizzy from the continuous shriek of the wind and the tremendous pressure, announced to the first officer that they were on the edge of the storm center, and that the end was coming. The wind kept constantly shifting, and had just ripped off the strongbacks from the two forward hatches, so making the ship like a tin can without a top, thrown into a turbulent stream. The seas were no longer steady, thunder- ing mountains of water; they were cruel, sudden upliftings of an ocean in agony, that dealt unexpected blows from unex- pected angles, and kept the ship pretty low and rolling more heavily, awash without cessation. Sparks, who had also been in the wheel- house, had reached the limit of his endur- Adventure ance and was sprawled on the deck, rolling violently from side to side, endeavoring to play with a pair of parallel rulers, and talk- ing quite cheerfully with his mother. The man at the wheel was intent upon the compass, watching it sway in its bin- nacle housing; it was affording him great amusement. He had watched it thus for twenty-four hours without moving, save to smile foolishly when it dipped more than usual. The geyser-like waves grew higher, the wind plucked more furiously at the shell of a steamer, and the vessel itself shuddered at every uncouth touch, and plunged de- spairingly on into the screaming gray. The skipper, still gripping the rail, wondered with a mild curiosity just how much longer he would be able to breathe, ’ if his throat continued to contract, and just why his ear drums did not burst in- ward. He thought of his wife, and his promised position, but mainly he regretted, to the very soul of him, that he would not be able to bring his ship back to the com- pany, his fetish. He was nearly an ideal captain. : 4 > A E'TTER—better—better—a man can’t be satisfied, can he? No satisfaction to a man as long as he is not going up-hill. It’s no end of a hard job to be a man—what with aches and pains and things of one sort and another. There is the eternal rub— man—show ’em.”’ And yet—with all of that there is also the knowledge that no man who imagines him- self to be better than the rest of the gang is quite a man. I detest those stuck-up birds, don’t you? People who say— “Vou are a LDPPPET OV tT: by Dll Adartw Gumps ‘Look, here, this is the way to go about it.” I like a guy who will stick his arm through mine and say— . “Bill you’re a darned old fool but I’m another—come on—let?’s show ’em.”’ I like a lot of things—apple-pie, ginger- bread, the first flower when Spring runs from the hills and all across the meadows, a pretty girl, ham and eggs, a comfortable seat by a good fire, or a well-cooked gump in the jungles—any old place where a man can lie down and sleep is the place for me. Ain’t that so? Do you know what a gump is? It is what _ tramps—who are really the only truly cul- tured people—call a chicken. micloool © inn