Adventure, August 3, 1919 — page 114: what you’re looking at

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

104 Adventure over tothem. Then, when the tide came in and washed away all traces of his digging, he rolled his clothes into a small b , made them secure on the raft, took a board of con- venient length and rowed out to a gap in the reef, worked his raft through and started on his perilous voyage. He had not gone far before he noticed a single sharp fin about two inches above the water. Crawson did not need to look to know what was beneath the fin; it was a long, gray cigar-shaped thing—a man- eater—slinking along with ghoulish stealth just across from the little raft. Crawson slapped the water loudly with the flat of his paddle, and for a few minutes the fin disap- peared. But soon it was back again, slinking along even closer than before. And so the man rowed on, and so the silent, gray ghoul dogged his course. That the shark might attack Crawson on his flimsy raft was not altogether improbable, and, if it did, the result was certain—the raft upset, a flash of red jaws, of gleaming teeth and—the end. But this ever present pos- sibility did not greatly worry Crawson; rather, it made the situation interesting— added zest to existence. After about three hours the raft crossed a slightly submerged reef, and the shark disap- peared. A little more and Crawson landed. A few minutes proved that there were no Moros on the island. It was not a sand formation like the island he had just left, but one of those humps of earth that have been pushed up above water surface by some subterranean upheaval. Having been raised from the bed of the ocean, the island was fertile and its foliage rank. There were coconuts and bananas and nipa in abundance. Also, Crawson found a spring of clear, fresh water bubbling through a crevice in the side of a rock-walled cliff. After allowing himself the luxury of half a dozen bananas and the milk from two half- grown coconuts, he set about the work of constructing a raft. First he gathered nipa and plaited it into three-ply strands of about forty feet each, These he tied from tree to tree, stretching them tight and leaving them to dry. Bundle after bundle he plaited, and strand after strand he stretched among the trees, till he had more than twelve hundred feet of nipa rope. This work occupied the best part of ten days, and, when it was finished, his next item was logs. Out of some small boughs and vines Craw- son constructed a sort of bin at the front end of the raft, and this he filled with coco- nuts, the milk of which would F and during that time nothing but coconuts and bananas, So he was glad to set out for the sand island again, where he could eat eggs. Crawson started about ten o'clock in the morning, but his raft was heavy, ended and consequently hard to row. He was all day covering the five or six miles ( fast to the old wreck and immediately began digging to see whether his treasure was still safe. He had spent some anxious ni about that, but now he found it just as he had left it. So he roasted himself a meal of eggs and then placed several dozen more under a large fire and left them to roast during the night. These were for the voyage, : THE next morning Crawson started PB his voyage to the small coast town of San Ramon. For eight days Crawson rowed diligently, stopping to snatch a few hours of sleep only when nature became too insistent to be denied. The end of the eighth day found him in a bad way, indeed. For three days he had not seen sun, moon or stars. He had com- pletely lost all idea of direction. Day and night, hour and minute, he dwelt on the probability of his location. Where was he? Was he going toward San Ramon or out to ‘ aa p — fer -4 -“ a “afl *p > Sem 4, comicbooks.com