Adventure Magazine Cover — page 151: what you’re looking at

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

The Fenceless Meadows indeed, at home with the wind in her hair; her eyes, very wide and open, and of a strange greenish-blue, matching the lights upon the water beneath the morning sun; her arms resting outstretched upon the taffrail; her whole body appearing, as the ship beneath her feet, to be ready, and awaiting a gay adventure. ‘“Nance,”’ said the owner, stepping out on deck, ““Mr. Tattersall figures that it’s up to you to bring him luck.”’ Nance Dowser laughed, a laugh like the distant murmur of a strong wind on the sea. “Oh! yes—I guess,” she cried, and added —“T bet Mr. Tattersall loves me like he loves fog when he’s making a landfall.” The two men went to the bridge. The crew were coming aboard, climbing over the railing, hauling sea-chests and sea-bags after them; shouting to each other; laughing and Swearing—some morose and silent; some cursing the boarding-master, the ship and the sea. Shouldering their dunnage, they betook themselves forward and, tossing their belongings into the fo’csle, stood about the foredeck talking noisily of the shore, the girls and of their last ships. Leaning over the bridge rail, the skipper called to his mate— ‘“Heave in, sir.” The hands swarmed upon the fo’csle head, shipping the windlass bars and laying their weight upon them; their feet stamping rhythmically, one of them rousing a chantey —an old song of the sea; the rest lifting the refrain, sending it echoing over the bay; so that the people on the ferry-steamers crowded to the rails to watch and to listen. Dowser went to the poop and the girl, throwing her arms around his neck, cried— ‘“‘Pa, I wish you were coming too.”’ ‘Aye, so do I, my girl,” he answered her. An old man, a thin, white-bearded, ca- daverous fellow, put his head out of the chart-house door and seeing them touched his finger to his forehead. ‘‘Moses,”’ cried Dowser, “I leave her in your charge.” The old man, stepping from the chart- house, stood before them; looking at Dow- ser, he said— “She'll come back, all well—never you fear, sir.” The owner, taking his daughter’s hands in his, pressed them close; stooping to kiss her; the girl gazing over the water, wiping 143 her eyes—the sun flashing red strands in her biown brown hair; the ship swaying a little, beneath her feet—dancing to the tides of morning. “T must be going,”’ he said. Turning, he hurried from the poop; and calling to his skipper, ‘‘Good luck!” disap- peared over the ship’s side into the waiting boat; to sit watching the ship gather way, her numbers all atlutter at her peak, the ripple swirling about her forefoot; and, catching sight of Moses at the chart-house door, to cry, once more— ‘Good luck.” he tug snorted at the tow-line, and the bark, slipping toward the heads, men sprang aloit, loosing white topsails to flap in the salty wind. Il just before Nance Dowser was born. For eighteen days the ship Na- nette lay becalmed within a degree of the line; the sea motionless, the sky piti- lessly blue—no cloud drifting across its hopeless infinity; the sun beating down fiercely upon the decks of the Nanette; her sails clewed up, hanging in idle folds from the spars. Under an awning that stretched from side to side of the poop, hidden from the deck by walls of canvas, lay a woman whose strength was ebbing away. The silence was complete; broken only when, the wheel relieved, the departing helmsman repeated the course to the officer on the bridge—the course a farce, the ship swinging with the ocean currents. By night the voice of the lookout man, reporting from the fo’csle head, crying along the moonlit deck— ‘‘A-1-I-1-l-l-s well, sir,” alone disturbed the ghostly silence of the limpid moonlit sea. Two hours after Nance Dowser came into the world the woman whose name was borne by the becalmed ship died—as a star that dips under the searim. That midnight the lookout man was silent, and the helmsman, stealing from the poop, whispered the course. When dawn came they buried her, lower- ing her gently from the quarter-railing, wrapped in white canvas; the hands gath- ering silent, upon the quarter-deck, waiting, respectfully, with bowed heads, till the closing of the little book from which the C@ NOOLK S C@ iin