Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 17, 1924 — page 123: what you’re looking at

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

THE ROARING FORTIES. Forbes kept his ship dead before the gale, and with the head sea Valkyrie be- gan to rear and plunge like a frenzied stallion. The captain then gave the order to take in the main lower topsail, the only rag still set, and as soon as the sheet was started, the lower topsail gave one shake, and was gone. By daylight Valkyrie was running due south under bare poles with two men at ‘the wheel. She was plunging to the fore- mast, but shipped no water aft. The sea, in Forbes’s phrase, was “a succession of earthquakes and volcanoes.” The rain fell in solid sheets, while the wind roared behind with infinite vexation. The men at the wheel had been lashed te the after bitts. In order to get aft to see the course steered, the officers were com- pelled to lie down flat, and crawl along the deck. After one of these journeys ait, Mr. Pugsley as he raised himself was picked up by the wind, and hurled bodily forward, crashing into the after rail. Richard Dunbar, who had come on deck in only a shirt and trousers, had the shirt ripped off his back, and whirled away into the scud-filled sky. Valkyrie ran clean round the circle of the storm. Although the sea was heaped up in mountain peaks on every side of her, she was as lively as a kitten, seeming even in the fiercest onslaught to find delight in flitting away before the furies. About daylight Valkyrie, which had been steering southwest when the typhoon be- gan, was steering northeast and at eight o’clock she was steering north. With the glass beginning to rise, Forbes decided to bring her to. As she came up to the wind she lay over so far that Dunbar exclaimed: ‘Tf we’d hove her to before, it would have been the end of us.” When she came head to the sea, the look- out, who had not been called off the fo’c’s’le head, was washed aft, and bringing up against the foremast, with the terrific force of the sea, had his back broken. The poor fellow died before they reached him. The typhoon, though it did not last long, tried Valkyrie to the extreme. Beyond the loss of her sails, which were blown out 8A 273 of the double gaskets, the clipper did not strand a rope yarn. For some time Captain Forbes gazed at his gear aloft, searching every spar and shroud and stay. At length beside himself with admiration, he exclaimed: “ Donald MacKay said there was not wind enough in all the oceans to test your strength aloft, my beauty, and now I know he’s right.” CHAPTER XL. CLASSIC OF THE OCEANS. MONG the tea clippers there were many ways of achieving success. Some captains invariably made good tracks, Others prided themselves on their daring navigation in cutting corners and in dashing through narrow rock studded channels after dark. Of this latter type was Bully Forbes. Three days after Valkyrie ran through a typhoon, she overtook the Wanderer, the great white tea clipper, known as the pride of England. For some time the two famous cracks kept company. ‘The exhilarating influence of the presence of the English clipper had the effect of putting Valkyrie’s crew upon their toes. “ Don’t forget that that’s the Union Jack aboard that white clipper over yonder,” said Forbes. This speech on the part of the skipper was hardly needed, for the Valkyrie had a prime racing crew, every mah an A. B. in the truest sense, and every man with a month’s pay wagered. Under such con- ditions there was no need of urging. The crew of Valkyrie were possessed of that finest of all racing qualities, esprit-de- corps. Let the order be given for shorten- ing sail and at any hour of day or night the watch below would be on deck in an in- stant. Because of this smartness, Forbes was able to carry sail to the utmost limit. No man-o’-warsmen ever went to stations more rapidly than the Valkyrie’s crew went to their appointed tasks. With all hands going about, they would have the ropes coiled up, in ten minutes from the “ Ready About.” For a week the white clipper and the COMmMicloooks COl)