Adventure Magazine Cover — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

Plunder FULKE’S sloop had come about se and was running down for the bows J} of the dhow. Neill was lunging on a close-hauled tack for her quarter. ‘The dhow was in line between them, unable to bring her guns to bear, save one carronade of small weight on poop and bows, popping spitefully. A white splinter showed on the bow of Neill’s sloop. Shouts came from Avary’s crew, yelling encouragement and envy of their more dar- ing allies. They turned expectantly toward the poop. At sight of their fellows racing on to close quarters they itched to be at it themselves. Avary quailed before the glare of Horton flaying his yellow soul. “Take her over and be to you!’’ he said, and went swiftly down the poop ladder to his cabin. He knocked the neck off a brandy-bottle and swigged at it, cutting his mouth with the sharp edges without, notic- ing, gulping down the strong stuff. ‘A lousy coward! Called that on his own poop! He’d show them!’’ His heart reacted to the stimulus of the alcohol, pumping the blood through his veins, flooding the vessels of his. brain. “A coward, eh?” He set down the bottle and looked at his pistols. He poured out a silver tankard full of the brandy, almost a pint of it, and drained it. By some’strange chemistry his own self was transmuted into another, primed with reckless deviltry. Sparkle came into- his eyes, energy to his limbs. The day was hot; it was sweltering in the cabin; the brandy brought his body to, fever heat. Avary stripped off his laced coat and his brocaded vest, rolling up the lace ruffles of his fine linen shirt and adjusting the shoulder-sling in which he carried his spare pistols. Two brace more were in his belt, buckled over a crimson sash. He drew sword and tossed aside the scabbard, leaping out of the cabin with a shout. The men had stripped to short drawers, belts and sashes, with gaudy cloths bound about their heads. Legs were bare; so were their bronzed, hairy bodies and brawny arms. Horton had brought the ship to a course along which she raced toward the dhow like a sprinter kept behind at scratch and off at last. The batteries had been inhauled and the gun-tackles secured. Each man was a walk- ing arsenal. They stood in four groups, 2 17 ready for the word to send them over rail in simultaneous attack. Grappling-irons were ready to cast. Hand-grenades were piled in woven baskets. The men had chosen their weapons according to their fancy; pike or cutlas or broad-ax. To the new Avary they seemed an efficient lot of devils, and he strode forward like a master demon with his face bloodied from the bottle neck and lit up with his newly inspired ferocity. “Pikes and pistols, bullies! There lies our fortune. Up into the tops, some of you, with the grenades. We'll give ’em a taste of before we board. We’ll make short work of the infidels!”’ He sprang to the rail and shook his fist at the dhow while his men cheered him. For all his pistolwork they had held some doubt of his mettle. They had none now. Two scuttlebutts of native rum had been broached, into which they dipped their pannikins at will. They could not distin- guish between his mood and their own. Only Horton grinned sardonically from the poop. He had little fear of the issue. By Fulke’s and Neill’s accounts the pilgrims would prove sorry’ fighters. He fancied the first estimate of a thousand far short of the actual number packed close in the waist, watching the oncoming ships. Now the shot.from the dhow were plump- ing all about The Duke, tearing through the canvas, severing a shroud or two, whistling by, all aimed above her hull, the guns fired irregularly. There were signs of panic aboard her. Avary jumped down from the rail, brandished his blade, hurried back to the poop to take full command again while giv- ing directions to the helmsman. Fulke’s sloop had sheered alongside, her bowsprit entangled with that of the dhow, grapples making fast, the men clambering aboard by fore and bobstay. Neill’s craft slid up to the starboard quarter as The Duke came sweeping down and up into the wind, her bows battering at.the sides of the dhow under the muzzles of the belching guns, her yards locking with those of the Mogul’s ship—like the horns of fighting stags. Greek fire, stinking, blinding, was tossed from the dhow. A shower of grenades an- swered, spreading confusion among the pil- grims. Fulke’s bullies hacked their way from the bows, Neill’s men slashed a bloody lane through the defenders of the poop as Avary, side by side with Horton, to the CORnNICGLOO S (C@