Judge, 1910-08-06 · page 18 of 18
Judge — August 6, 1910 — page 18: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a tall-tale comic strip featuring an unnamed sea captain recounting an implausibly heroic adventure. The humor relies on increasingly absurd coincidences and exaggerations typical of seafaring folklore. The narrative arc: Captain Fibb encounters a sword-fish, disarms it (the sword breaks), repairs the fish's weapon out of kindness, later gets captured by pirates and left to die, and is rescued by that same grateful sword-fish, who cuts him down and tows him to safety. The satire targets the genre of exaggerated adventure yarns—the type of unbelievable stories sailors traditionally told. The joke is that every improbable element compounds the next, reaching an absurd climax where an animal performs impossible rescue tasks. The "moral" opening about returning good for evil gets hilariously validated by literal animal gratitude, mocking sentimental adventure tropes popular in early 20th-century entertainment.
📄 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 1, “Children, you must always return good fer evil it pays. On z 2. —— But that boat wuz armor-plated, and when he rams inter wuz cruisin’ about in me motor-boat I suddently spies a big sword-fish comin’ it with main strength his deadly sword buckles lke a reed and towards me and aimin’ right fer the side of me little craft. breaks off.—— THANKS, OLD MAN 5) WONT FORGET YouR KINDNESS! wuz captured by me to the mast rish in the wide, 3 Well, a sword-fish without a sword ain't much good, and that poor fel ler wuz in an awful stew. So I fishes up the broken piece and glues it on again, jenin’ it out; then I binds it up carefully. Yep, that fish went away with gratitude in his heart ! —— a band o pirates. After lootin’ us, 1 head and scuitled the ship, leavin me to after str wide ses —— BLOW ME YF IT AINT MY OLD FRIEND, THE SWORDFISH! 5. —— But all of a suddent I feels a scrapin’ at the mast beneath me, and 6. —~ ~ Purty soon he had me cut down ; then be loosens me bonds, t. lookin’ down I beholds me old friend, the sword-fish, with his sword grown Tope between his teeth, and tows me towards land, where he pulls me up safe her again, sawin’ away fer dear life! — and sound several days later, jist as sure as I'm a-settin’ here!”