Judge, 1910-07-30 · page 16 of 16
Judge — July 30, 1910 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a tall-tale comic strip featuring an exaggerated seafaring yarn. Captain Fibb narrates an implausible adventure: his becalmed ship crosses the equator, the crew goes mad from heat, and he jumps overboard seeking relief. Underwater, he discovers a compressed-air tank, grabs it, and uses the air blast to propel the ship at "twenty-five-knot" speed back to port. The humor relies on the absurdity of the premise—the ridiculous logic that a tank of compressed air could both save him from drowning and power an entire ship. This type of exaggerated sailor's tall tale was popular comic fodder in early-20th-century humor magazines. The cartoonist (signed "C. Weaver") depicts each stage of the increasingly implausible story through sequential panels, emphasizing the comedic escalation and the narrator's earnest delivery of obvious nonsense.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
JUDGE THE YARNS OF CAPTAIN FIBB. — Well, half the crew went crazy with the heat, and there wuz Bimeby I couldn't stand it no longer, so I jumps ** Listen, and I'll tell yez as strange a tale as ever came from the high seas. We wuz a-crossin’ the equator when we became becalmed, and fer weeks nary no relief in sight overboard to end me agony.—— a breath stirred, and the sails flapped idly ag’in’ the masts.— Like a shot I goes to the bottom, and there I sees before me a tank —— Then suddenly I gits an idee! Like 2 madman I grabs that tank full of compressed air! — and makes fer the surface — Teae <1 WET Aer a —— Well, we scudded through the briny at a twenty-five-knot clip, and purty soon we reaches port safe and sound, jist as the air in the tank gave out !"" — I places that tank in the stern and fixes a funnel to the valve and lets Yessir, a blast of air shot inter them sails that made every mast and ver rip. spar creak ! —