Adventure, December 3, 1920 — page 66: what you’re looking at

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

56 } under bare jib and spanker it was down the wind at all costs. Not even the weight of the cargo could deter the bark now. She took the crests at a lurid, wracking leap, trembled and swayed in sickening indecision, then shot dizzily down a mountainside like something solid. And the snow began to fall, in sparse flakes at first, in vagrant eddies, in stinging whirls that bit the skin. The next night found them shut off from the world by a curtain miles thick, a great white shroud. Captain Miant stopped Arnie at the galley door and hauled him into the lee. “We should be off Concepcion or thereabout.” His tone exhibited depressing uncertainty. Hesitating, he came to it— | “What do you call it?” “Almighty ——, sir, I call it. voyage for us all.” “Come, my man. I’ve asked you a question. ‘The fate——” And then Arnie laughed. ‘‘The fate of the vessel,” the old man was about to say. It was all so very clear. And it mattered so little. The gale was driving them south-south-west and a point south; it could be but a matter of time. Seventeen years following the seas; and the end of it all just where he had started! “‘What’s the fate of the vessel to me, sir? I signed on for masthand, not navigator.” This answer regaled him hugely. “I’m not good enough to help run this ship, sir, but I don’t mind saying,” he shouted above the tumult, “‘we stand a sight closer to All Saints’ Bay than Concepcion. ‘That’s my guess. And that’s right, too, for we'll all be saints soon, and the old brig—she’ll make a tune out of ’er pipes in Davy Jones’ locker.” ~ He made a study-picture whipping to the plunge of the bows, his head bare to the icy spray and the fury-driven snow. He had blood, had Arnie Sondheim, that all the bitter whisky in the world could not thin. The tempest lifted him out of forlorn introspection, cleared his mind, made him careless of consequences and fit for anything. Son of Thor—or Woden! The old man might strike him down where he stood for his impudence; he would not raise a hand. He laughed. And then he fell silent, for the captain had turned himself about and was stumbling away, his shoulders bent as if with premature age or infinite distress. And Arnie had seen his eyes just for a moment. They were the eyes of a harrowed, bereaved man; a man to whom the ship was everything: pride, hope, joy, wife and sweetheart. Arnie watched him out of sight in the snow- bank, a little startled at the gaunt transforma- tion. Sobered, he continued toward the galley where others were before him obtaining the evening meal for the crew. Even in such times men must eat. The pasty-faced cook dashed hither and And a quick Watch your tongue. Adventure thither, singing out cheerfully, swinging his undersized frame upon every jutting shelf with a series of surprized grunts that not at all broke his optimism. “Two minutes, lads; I’ll have it ready now!” : Bang went a pot of potatoes off the stove and on to the floor. The men _ grinned openly. “There goes the third mess I’ve peeled, lads. Never saw such a catouse. I want to know.” The man’s shirt was wringing-wet with per- spiration; a bead glistened on the end of his nose. “No sense in gettin’ webbed up, what say? The Lord sends the wind, and the devil brews the fog, is what.” Away he skated, a ludi- crous shadow. A cry drifted down— “Hands *hoy!—top hamp—— Oaths broke loose. The rest was lost. The men shuffted to the door. “At it, lads! Dll hev yer tuh eat——” The storm flung them off their feet. They crawled forward. Shadows were taking the shrouds at a slow, fighting pace. Axes were going aloft to clear broken and tangled hamper. In the dimness one clutching fellow missed his footing; his chalk face showed in a crack in the snow-pall. His numb hands managed to hang on. Up! Up! Up! Cruel; work and a haunt- ing glimpse below when a momentary rent made the deck visible. Why did the fool take the lee shrouds with the wind forcing him out— out Suddenly the ratlines thrummed the terrible tidings. A cry—trightful, anguished—all eyes straining upward—a sailor leaping to carry as- sistance—too late! A ghostly something slith- ered down, bounced over and over, limbs out- stretched rigidly and clawing—clawing. Just a gleam of a ghastly visage shooting by before the raging combers swallowed it. An afve- stricken tenseness! “Man overboard!” a buffeted cry rang hollowly. “____!? from the captain. years of sailing——” He searched the convulsed deep. The mate announced in his ear: “Ed Garteck it was! sir?” A useless query; they both knew. The Snow- bird swept on, a snowbird in very truth, ab- sorbed by the merciless white pestilence. By the morning she leaked badly. In the galley whence he had been ordered the bit of a cook crawled on his knees, preparing a meal that no one could reach, that no one cared to eat. Arnie with a cut across his cheek clotted and un- noticed, fought into the galley to hear that aim- less piping: ‘“Twenty-one What’s to be done, ‘___ he squirm right out 0’ that sperm With a fistful o’ ambergris—— 6 GOMNIELOOOLKS (E@