Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

26 berthed in the forecastle and had ex- perienced no such tender mercies from the boatswain. Until one day Peter haled the landsman into the depths of the ship. Here he was turned over to a being who answered to the name of Jacks and was the ship’s cook. His duties were to tend the galley fire, fetch the victuals to the mariner’s mess on the main deck, to wash plates, swab out the galley and in general to do whatever Jacks was minded he should. “Ho, a landsman!” grunted the cook. “Ah,”’ nodded Peter, ‘‘a landsman as is a fancy hand with dirk or fist. A man as has put better men than you, Jacks, where only the —— could find them. So speak him civil and keep your hand off him, or we'll have a new cook and fare better by the same token.” “Fare better!” Jacks was blind in one eye and the other was askew in his head, giving him a limited range of vision, but a baneful stare when his feelings were aroused, as now. “You sons o’ bilge puncheons ’ud like pickles with your beer, and rum every time you spit, I’m thinking. Half the stores were rotting in the salt barrels when they were stowed.” “So ye say—” Peter winked at the armiger—‘‘but J say it’s enough and more to spoil the beer to have it under hatches along of you, Jacks.” He took Ralph aside for a word of advice. “Bide here for a time. Y’are a lands- man, mind, and Master Dickon and his bullies will stand for no favorites. Be a swabber for a while, then we’ll make shift to have ye out of the orlop. By then thy natural mother, Ralph, ’ud not know ye for her son.” x4 THIS proved to be true. For days Was) Ralph labored in the dark hold, at <<: duties that turned his stomach even more than the pitching of the Edward. Once, watched by the saturnine eye of Jacks, he tried to wash head and hands in a bucket of salt water and surveyed the result ruefully. Soot and smoke coated the grease that clung to his skin. Once on the spar deck, during evening prayer when all hands except Jacks were mustered in the waist, Chancellor met him face to face and half frowned as if something about the landsman struck him as familiar. Adventure But at that moment a hail came from the masthead. “Sail ho!” That day they had entered a belt of fog and though the shore was scarce a league distant they could see it not. They were lying-to, upon command of Sir Hugh, near a village from which Chancellor had been able to procure a boatload of fowls, to eke out his scanty stock of meat. Ralph could smell the hay that the people on shore had been cutting and the fresh, strong odor of pine trees. But by degrees, as he watched the cur- tain of mist from the windward rail, he be- came aware of another odor, less pleasing. Out of the mist a black vessel took shape—a long pinnace with two masts, only the fore- sail being set. It moved down the wind sluggishly, and he heard Chancellor mutter that it had the seeming of a pirate craft. Ralph wondered why such a small boat -should venture to attack the Edward. Chancellor sprang into the shrouds and bellowed through cupped hands: “Stand off, or you will foul us. our lee, or take a shot!’’ He repeated the warning in Dutch, but the pinnace kept its course. The master gunner, with some of the hands, climbed briskly to the fore deck of the Edward and whipped the tarpaulin from one of the cali- vers, while others ran below for shot and powder and Peter came up from the galley with a slow match that he had kindled at Jacks’ fire. The weather-beaten faces of the men about Ralph brightened at prospect of a fight. They were a rugged lot; many of them had sailed with Chancellor before and Peter dubbed them “tarry-Johns.”’ Yet the master gave no order to issue swords and pikes to the crew. His hail had not been answered, and be- fore long all on the Edward saw the reason. The pinnace slid nearer, and veered away uncertainly. A man was visible now at the wheel, and another was perched under the bowsprit on the crudely carved dragon that served for figurehead. Another pair hung from the yard on the foremast, and two others from the main yard. They hung by the necks and turned slowly as the yards swung with a dry creak- ing. A puff of wind bore the pinnace almost under the Edward’s counter and Ralph Keep to CORNICLO© (C©