Adventure Magazine Cover — page 152: what you’re looking at

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

144 mate, unused to reading, mumbled one brief prayer; Captain Dowser beside him, staring across the unpitying sea. It was Moses, the sea-cook, till then the butt of the whole ship’s company, who took the child in charge; holding her in his sinewy arms, smiling into her tiny face, while the people of the sea stood by, perplexed and wondering. Three days after the birth of Nance Dowser the calm broke—three days through which the sea-cook never left the child; Dowser looking hungrily on, helpless, en- slaved to an old cook whose every order he hastened to obey; Tattersall, the mate, tak- ing charge of the ship, bringing her to port, with a skipper whose mind seemed to have gone from all save his child. The ship, coming to anchorage, he hastened with his little sea-born daughter to see the doctors—fearful of some mis- chance in her rough nursing. The doctors smiled at him, saying: “Keep her at sea, captain. strong as one of your topsails.” Dowser, a grim horror of the sea upon him, took his ship seaward again—Moses with him. Close to her second birthday, going to sea once more, he vowed that it should be for the last time; and, when she was four, com- ing again to anchor off the ferries, turning his ship and all her business over to his mate, he quit the sea. Tattersall put the ship in drvdock, gave her a complete overhaul, and chartered her for Europe. Dowser, with his little daughter and the old cook, settled beside the water-front at Alameda where, for a month, romping upon the lawn, gathering flowers and sailing to and from the ship with her father and old Moses, the child seemed happy. She had one doll-—an iron-headed thing presented to her by Moses on her third birthday, and long since rebuilt as to arms and legs and trunk—only the iron head remaining indestructible; calling for other needs upon her imagination, and living in a world peopled by folk of strange names in- vented by herself; seeming to care but little for the company ‘of other children, and at times avoiding them. The doll was named aiter Moses; and doll Moses and cook Moses were of an importance not surpassed by Dowser himself. As the weeks passed, the ship preparing She’s as Adventure for her voyage, the little girl grew less willing to leave after each day spent on board with her father or with Moses—days spent in running here and there about the cabins, up and down the accommodation ladders, shouting to imaginary sailors upon the masts, and calling down the hatches to in- visible inhabitants of the between decks’ holds. The time for sailing drawing near, it became evident that she would fret for the ship; for her time between visits was spent in eager anticipation of the delightful com- pany of the unseen crews with which she had peopled the vessel. One day, a week before the ship was due to sail, Tattersall said: “Captain Dowser, I reckon you’d better be getting your chest packed. We go to sea a week from today.” Sitting at the cabin table, listening to the chatter of the child upon the poop overhead, the two men stared at each other. When the Nanette went through the heads Dowser was upon the bridge. = Golden Gate, one morning when the hands were washing the decks down, a sailor, coming to the mate, whispered: “Mister, feel the main latch, sir—in the shade there, under the belly o’ the mains’1.” Tattersall did so, and, going aft, blew down the speaking-tube to Dowser’s cabin. Meeting him as he stepped on to the poop, he said— ‘“‘She’s afire below, sir.” Dowser gave the customary orders. “Everything battened down? Ventila- tors closed? JHow’sshe heading? Allright we'll lay her for Pitcairn.” They laid her course for Pitcairn, a speck in the Pacific, nine hundred miles away; the breeze light, the ship fast becoming an oven, the decks almost too hot to walk upon; ob- taining stores from the lazaret well nigh impossible, men lowered with ropes under their arms, grasping whatever they might lav their hands upon in the smoke-filled storeroom, and hauled back unconscious to the deck. One morning, the wind freshening, the ship tore through the sea under full sail, her lee railing dipping deep in the wash, and the sprays flying in clouds across her decks— her hatches smoking and wisps of smoke A FEW ‘weeks after they had left the COIN Clooolkks C@