Adventure Magazine Cover — page 154: what you’re looking at

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

« 144 miles an hour onshore and piling up the surf mountain high the man who got through could call himself lucky. When I came below that time I told the skipper I thought she was dragging the least bit, though I wasn’t sure. He said he’d go up with us next-time and have a look for himself. Well, it seems like she was just waiting for the skipper to come up, because we hadn’t been on the bridge ten minutes when she began to drift shoreward, dragging that heavy three- ton anchor with her. There wasn’t any mis- take about it. Of course we couldn’t see any- .thing, but feeling was another matter. When the wind lulled the least bit or when the seas loitered a mite she’d slack her chain; then she’d jerk back with a rush and the chain would go taut. She wouldn’t stop with a taut chain, though; she’d keep going a bit more, say a dozen feet. Suppose she done that trick eight or ten times a minute; it wouldn’t take her a thou- sand years to get ashore on the shoals. There wasn’t much grip for the flukes of the anchor, you see, on account of asandy bottom. It takes good rock bottom to hold an anchored ship steady in a heavy sea. | THE skipper snapped on a little search- ee light amidship against the forward bridge rail, and by its light I saw his lips tight together. He poked about in a locker and pulled out a ten-pound fead: line and handed it to me. “Wetmore, see if you can get out there on the end of the bridge,” he cried, his lips in my ear. “‘Heave the lead until [tell you to stop. When you read your mark hold up your fingers to say how many fathoms you get. I’ll turn the light that way.’ He gave me the beam-.of light across the port wing of the bridge and. I started out, holding to the rails and stanchions for my life. The wind was so strong it blew that heavy sounding- lead out from my body like it was made of wood. It was a man’s job ‘to get out there to the end of the bridge, and-it was a man’s job to stay there when I reached it. I was waist deep in water sometimes when an extra big sea swept over us. I lashed myself to the bridge rail with the free end of the lead-line and began to heave. The first mark I read, and a job it was, showed eighteen fathoms. I held up my hand three times, then showed only three fingers. The skipper nodded and I heaved again. I got eighteen that time, too, and again after that. Then I got sixteen right on the jump. I saw the skipper’s lips move when I gave him the signal for sixteen. For fifteen or twenty minutes longer I kept heaving the lead, getting less,and less all the ) Adventure time. It was plain as the nose on your face _ that we were dragging, and if the lead-line ~ Vea lying we were dragging faster than we sho Presently I got ten fathoms. You’d i imagine | = = = ‘ maybe there wasn’t anything in that to worry _ a man, seeing that ten fathoms is sixty feet _ shore measure and the little girl drew only © Ras twenty-one feet. Yet there wasn’t any way telling how far she’d drag beforeshestopped,and = then she might be stopped by hitting bottom. — I gave the skipper the signal for the last Se mark of ten fathoms and he called me in. “Bad, sir,” I says when I got to his side. “Tt’s run or go ashore, Wetmore,” he says. “‘We’ve got another anchor, sir,”’ I suggested. “Nothing but a kedge,” he replied. ‘‘Be- sides, the chains might get snarled and we’d be worse off than ever. our chain and run. No, we’ve got to slip sure.’ We couldn’t for a fact, sir. Our chances of beating out of there against that wind and sea were about one in five, and that wasn’t much of a chance. But if we stayed where we were we'd go ashore. There was a steady roaring dead astern that told us what sort of surf was only knows if we'll -* live through that mess outside, but we’ve got to take a chance. We can’t stay here, that’s running, and it couldn’t have been more than aa half a mile away. The skipper swung the searchlight to take =a iid seasin in the forecastle. I’ve seen some my time, sir, but I’d never seen one as wildand ugly as that one. There wasn’t any forecastle; just a smother of boiling water. ve I wondered how we were going to slip our ain. We only had a hundred and ten fathoms of chain all told. There was a shackle at forty fathoms from the anchor and another at eighty- five fathoms. Two shackles were all we had. We had out a few feet better than eighty fathoms. ‘The only shackle we had aboard was — the one out there on the forecastle buried under water. I didn’t believe any man alive could go out there and live in that hell of roaring black water long enough to knock the pin out of the shackle and let the chain slip. “There ought to be a shackle down there somewhere, sir,” I yelled in the skipper’s ear, pointing at the ‘flood below us. ‘®—_ Juck!”” he roared back. “We'll have to unfasten the bitter-end from the holding- bolt in the chain-locker and let the whole works go.’ “Tt’s ~ bolted into the frame, sir,” I told him, “Don’t make any difference; we’ve got to get it loose some way or we're done,” he an- swered “Needs must when the devil drives,” I said. He didn’t hear me and wheeled to the tubes COMMICLOOOKS When I saw oa