Argosy All-Story Weekly, 4 February 1922 — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

732 proach of wolves. The water beneath the vaporous columns was whipped into spray, caught in the vortex and leaped up to meet the opposing and descending spouts, join- inginto pillars of air and spray and whirl- ing water, advancing with great speed, spinning like dervishes, a sea tornado where liquid took the place of dust. The sails of the prahus were suddenly raised like wings of floating gulls. There was still a gap through which they might escape toward us, but it was rapidly clos- ing. For a few seconds the prakus rushed over the surface, and then the wind failed them utterly. ._ There must have been an almost com- plete vacuum between the _ waterspouts, Frantically the paddles went out, and the fleet looked like water-striders suddenly frightened by rain. But they were doomed. The spouts appeared to be dominated by some law of attraction, and they rushed together as dancers might in some wild revel. A waterspout can sink an ocean steamer—has done so, on verified occasions, with tramp freighters. Normally they last ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, ' for fifteen to twenfy minutes before they tumble, in tons upon tons of down- smashing water and foam, unless they meet an obstruction. I looked at Li Yuen again. It was the first and last time I ever saw fear in his face. But there we were, in the grip of the titanic forces of an angry sea, doomed, we thought. We and our enemies together would go down into the’sea’s depths. It was as though Nature meant to teach us that she was supreme and we little squalling children to be chastised. “ Chai-yah!” cried Li Yuen again, and then his face took on the impassive calm of a Chinese gentleman facing death, the in- scrutable look of one who has found the way. And as the waterspout rose higher and higher, threatening us all with instant de- struction, I could only stand there shiver- ing, cursing myself for the quixotic folly that made me try to find the ruby’s owner. If I ever got out of this alive~ But I hadn’t time to think about my future then. It didn’t look like I would have any future. (To be concluded NEXT WEEK.) Harold de Polo ONSIDERING that only a scant six ( months ago he had fought the heavy- weight champion of the world to a ten-round draw, it was decidedly an in- glorious accident—even a ludicrous one, to be brutally frank. He was plodding, slowly and wearily, along the roadway. It was a moonless night, with a dark and low-hanging sky, and the thoroughfare was unknown territory.. Deep- ly immersed in his own glum thoughts, he did not hear the hum of the approaching 7A GEomichbooks:co