Adventure Magazine Cover — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

The ‘‘Bosun”’ which was far indeed, with his curious nose poking into everything above decks and below—and came to be dubbed “the bosun.” A bosun, an elderly and proper member of the starboard watch informed him, was neither of the crew nor of the cabin buta man by himself, a general help and one to be respected. “I’m hanged if I care about respect,” shrugged Charley, “but is it a job with something to do? I’ve got to get on to this, you know; be on the jump.” So the “bosun” sat lookout in the crow’s- nest and picked oakum in the forepeak, assisted the steward with the stores, wiped pans and peeled potatoes for the cook, kept tally of the cargo and provisions, took down the captain’s figures when he “shot the sun”’ and climbed the wheel when the helmsman could not steady it. The wind held strong considerably past the Azores, and after a period of light, changing gusts, the bark entered the north- east trades which seemed to sweep out of the Gibraltar Straits bearing dreamily the burden of heavy spices. Infinitely as- tonished, the boy watched the vessel put upon a southwest course. When the trade wind gradually gained power he began to understand how distance and the winds so constantly disagreed: And one hundred miles north of the Cape Verde Islands in a morning blow that the second mate, Leiken, did not prepare for, the Lynn Reed lost her main-topgallant mast. In a terrific clatter that brought the watch tumbling out of the scuttle and the captain out of his berth, the whole upper structure of furled royal and bellying topgallant crashed outward, carrying the vessel over nearly on to her beam’s end whence she righted herself sluggishly and not altogether. Acridly Plack watched the hacked wreck- age go by the board and heard the bellow from the wheel that told him the cargo had shifted. Off battens and hatch-covers! And the roaring trades flinging a-fine mist of spray over all. -Down into the hold and hook the falls of rude tackle on to boxes and crates and rolls! Up on to the deck with the precious stuffs, tarpaulin-protected as best they could be! Bang, bang, bang! With the carpenter fitting a jury-mast and belaying-pins rat- tling and men hoarsely intoning the chaos ye ~*~ of the moment. Booms thumping up and up—then the discouraged order to shorten down sail while new canvas was bent. Luffing and carrying on before the wind! Pandemonium! -The old struggle against the old luck! Plack repeated in an undertone: “No, no! We'll have no trouble—not on this cruise.” But his eyes took on a tired light—which was no light at all—and his new eagerness waned. Only Charley, gaily active in the thick of it, held him from the power of the recurring disgust, the disgust that each time made him curse the day he took to the sea. Charley learned considerable of sheets and halyards and stays and braces and talked of them continually at dinner, which infre- quently he took with his father. The glory of the battle had got into the boy’s veins. er and foretopmast stays’l,” he reported gleefully. ‘Hear the holler aloft, dad. She’s madder’n a boiling hen.” ““She’s all we’ve got, boy,”’ Plack told him plainly. “We make or break on. her. “Everything furled but tops’ls and spank- 3 SFr ne, eS OTS LR a) p FRE ig OTE gen Te SGD | Leg TO RS hr Te: RO SEY OR ig eke Se Pie Kd OF - ae a ee ws ht SB a. I CTY Lae ee eae » Ste eae — etcaw - ra. < a : * ~ re ee es =. en tee a eae Arma ee al = a SF P rare o9 Did the stuff get wet, Jahlet? I’m money — out on that.” “Can’t tell,” said Jahlet uncomfortably. This was the way it always began. There would be more; and the market missed by a month, if they came in at all. Charley was letting nothing escape him. He had come on this voyage with a reason; his father was not going to lose. They had had a little reverse, of no real consequence when one looked at it with a healthy mind. What was the loss of a day or so in ninety? This was man-size business; he felt himself growing up. . His intensity of contentment infected even Plack to the point of clinging to his re- found belief. Somewhat shakily the bark scampered on ahead of that mellowing thunder that Leiken scanned hawlike with a - glass at every minute. “Thirteen knots!’ bawled the youthful voice from the taffrail. “T’ll chance it,’”’ vaguely spoke Plack and went to the wheel-house to set a new course south-southwest half south. In the morn- ing he took a chronometer sight for longi- tude and found himself off the Amazon a few hundred miles. By nightfall the wind had fallen off one-half—in seven hours more it had died out entirely. . TOOK (E{0) tai i a a