Adventure Magazine Cover — page 66: what you’re looking at

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

60° Plack held stubborn council with Jahlet while Leiken walked a lazy deck that heaved with nothing but the greasy swell of a passed and gone storm. “We can maybe get a price for the cargo in Rio,” began Plack; “not nearly so good but a margin that would take us home. What do you say, Jahlet?”’ “T say, hang on!” growled the mate. “Vou said this would be a record-breaker, and you’d best stick to that. I don’t care if that boy zs aboard, we——” “Eh?” Plack interrupted. “What’s the matter with Charley now, Jahlet?”’ “Hm!” grunted Jahlet, who had not meant to say as much as was now forced out of him. ‘‘He’s a Jonah, sir, and it’s all my seamanship can do to hold the luck. e “?Pon my soul! Do you take stock in that sort of thing, Jahlet?” “T’m repeating the crew’s word for it. I don’t know whether I do or not. It don’t matter what J think; if I can’t get the watch to keep its spirit, why “Pshaw! They like him fine.” “Aye, so they do; a sailing Jonah ain’t despised always. But my money’s bound up with yours, sir, and to me it’s a very different matter. Which is to say, Pll fight any tin-can luck he brings aboard, and fight it clean to India.”’ “Plack batted his eyes and sat very still after the mate went out. ai was hot weather from first to last, and the sun made a yellow light on the sea that was like scorched prairie grass in August. Occasional squalls raced down upon them, sprang into the rigging and shook the ship, then raced back whence they THE calm held for six days. It had come—and vanished as they departed. A steamship passed by and held Plack’s hard eyes heavily. He was counting money in her. If he had passed in steam! “Fiddle-sticks!” laughed Charley. “That’s. a poor way to sail. No chances in it, and what’s the use when it’s all cut and dried? You’re not bothering, are you, dad? The old windjammer needs a rest; We won’t lose on this.”’ - The heat affected the crew as nothing else could.~ Their tempers became stirred so in midday that the night coolness had little power of alchemy. And in the midst of the 4 ~~ eee “< ? ’ - ied They took to the lad first off.: that’s all. Adventure swelter and shortness Charley actually began to lose caste among the ship’s com- pany. What Jahlet had repeated of him had been said in merest joke; it was said now in profoundest earnest. A sailoring man has the peculiar nature of sacrifice that yields up on the altar of superstition the thing he has most cherished; and the whisper came readily that Charley had brought the calm. Oblivious of the notoriety, the boy con- tinued to regard the heat and ennui as part of his great adventure and to flood the ship with his high spirits. When the long-ex- pected blow came off the land, he it was who saw its hazy warning and perhaps saved more than the weak jury-mast, for the wind struck on: with the pandemonium of a thousand bellowing bulls. Thereafter it settled down, tired out all in a moment, and sleepily prodded them on in clumsy snatches so that mates and master renounced their rest to watch for its shifting. In the crow’s-nest hour upon hour, taking no account of changes of the watch, Charley outdid them all; his voice shrilled first. The crew began once more to call him bosun and to speak of him so. Off St. Roque the rain came. It fell in sheets, in curtains, in thick streamers. The lessed rain! Every vestige of the blister- ing calm was wiped out; the warped boards sucked in the moisture and subsided; the nauseating smell of dry rot was washed away. From wash streak to trucks the Lynn Reed drank greedily and knew living again. And the rain kept on falling. There was little wind, but headway was maintained, and men laughed as they lay sprawled on the deck stark naked to get the stifling odor of the unaired fo’csle out of their pores. The scuttle butt was, filled and many others besides. The steward and Charley did endless laundering. Plack chuckled, once more himself, re- flecting to Jahlet: \ “A day saved from rafting water, and no end of good to the lot of us. Never saw so much rain.’ . But it did not stop, for all that. Limp- ing along under light gusts, they rolled laboriously nearly down to Rio with water beneath and water above and water all around. ‘The scuppers ran with it; the men could not escape it—it dripped into the fo’csle, and when the intoned voice of it was shut out for a brief respite below, GEomichoo (C S (E@) ee 3