Adventure Magazine Cover, June 20, 1925 — page 150: what you’re looking at

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

132 over the compass. With his finger on the compass card he waited anxiously to locate its course by the fourth blast. While he waited, another whistle sounded —this one between the schooner and the oncoming steamer. It was the piercing wail of the Comber. “‘Oo-00-oohl’’ answered the steamer, al- most from the exact spot whence the Comber had whistled. East by north—that was the steamer’s course—straight toward the Pela- mon! The skipper raced to the forecastle slide, which was open, and shouted: “Come on—quick! Big one comin’ up! Hurry up!”’ He dashed back to the wheel and started the engine. Up from the forecastle scur- ried the crew like rats, their sea boots drawn on, mackinaws and jackets hastily donned. Last of all came Mel, limping after the others in their hurried flight aft. ‘Keep yer eyes peeled an’ yer ears open!’ sang out Captain Dan, holding the wheel and squinting into the opaque fog to starboard. He steered south, sure of the steamer’s east- by-north course, but trusting wholly to luck that the invisible monster would whistle again before she loomed up or traveled safely past the Pelamon. Pierre and Ira held the little boxlike fog- horn of the schooner on the deck house and pumped out a penetrating little ya-a-a! Anxiously all hands listened. The oil- burning engine of the schooner steadily throbbed, the only sound that punctuated the ghostly silence. ‘ that steamer—she ain’t whistlin swore the skipper, holding the wheel sta- tionary, his heart pounding in the dreadful suspense. ‘She ain’t “ Off the bow, close, so close that they could almost make out the vessel itself, echoed the shrill whistle of the Comber. Captain Dan swung the wheel west. And from the direction in which the Pelamon was headed roared the oo-00-00h! of the on- rushing liner, bearing straight down on the schooner—a mass of crushing steel that would wipe the Pelamon from the face of the deep if it crashed into the tiny craft. Pierre pumped a desperate, appealing blast from the foghorn, a feeble wail for help and mercy that seemed scarcely louder than the twitter of Mother Carey’s chick- ens fluttering around the riding lights. The skipper gave the wheel a slight twist, bear- yy Adventure ing straight toward the locality from which the Comber had last whistled. The two apparitions of fast-moving lights overtopped by rolling black smoke burst out of the fog almost simultaneously. Straight toward the Pelamon’s bow raced the Comber, and in a direct line toward the starboard side of the struggling schooner bore that arrow of silvery white water cut by the huge steel prow of the ocean liner. Not a man of the crew moved a fraction of an inch from his position aft, although they knew, as did the skipper, that Death was Closing its two hands upon them. The liner did not sheer—it was traveling so fast that it could not have sheered without throwing its passengers out of their beds. But the Comber sheered, and sheered so abruptly that her swinging stern almost sideswiped the Pelamon. The schooner’s bowsprit grazed the trawler, which was in no less danger from the blind course of the liner than was the frail Pelamon, and Cap- tain Ira was bringing his craft about under full steam. It was probably Captain Ira’s maneuver which saved the Pelamon from being listed among those New England fishing craft which have been blotted mysteriously out of existence. For the schooner had no sooner plunged into the great wave which the fleeing trawler had left astern than the illuminated portholes and dimly lighted decks of the liner churned past to star- board, so close that for a few terrible seconds it seemed as if the Pelamon must be swept under that massive keel by its great suction. But, as on many another occasion when the Pelamon’s existence had been threatened by collision with a liner which violates all rules of navigation on the fishing banks, the staunch little schooner bobbed up and down like a bucking horse, wallowed from side to side, with her lee rail under most of the time, and slowly steadied herself while with diminishing blasts of their whistles the Comber and the hair-brain-skippered steamer kept up their grim game of hide and seek. ‘—— them liners—an’ trawlers, too!” fumed Captain Dan, after he had shut off the Pelamon’s engine and he and the excit- ed crew were recounting the details of the narrow escape they had just had. “It don’t do us no good to swear about ’em— but —— ’em!” comiclboool CO