Adventure Magazine Cover — page 74: what you’re looking at

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

eh ofInJon rick | ow z ee ee ackso — ee Nn oe Ws A ee - iy Bo ae ‘i , hy Oo. ee ey ta ETA eal sad Fae z" ean ae Wes = cy aoe Ae Lith gr SA de ee Rea ee SEB SM ‘. ‘aut Ses 3 ae pa WW ce 1< LG Gf. ha yi 9 J Author of ““Unwept, Unhonored and Unhung,” “Reverse Irish,” etc. JANUARY southwester howled up the California coast. Hum- boldt Bar was “breaking clear J across.” -From jetty to jetty the long, narrow entrance was a seething mass of roaring, crashing foam. Huge green combers, flecked to a grayish tinge by sand, rose “‘mountain high” from the south, crashed on and over the jetty and tumbled, boiling, across the channel. On to the middle ground—the real bar, outside the jetties—drove angry, plunging seas, filled with titanic force and hungry to destroy. Outside the bar, hove to as they rode the hissing, storm-driven swells, five steamers lay bar-bound. Three were lumber-vessels. Aboard the other two were huddled scores of seasick, miserable passengers. For two days they had gazed pathetically toward the land they were impotent to reach until Humboldt Bar chose to come down from its high horse. The masters of the storm-bound craft were old in experi- ence. They knew Humboldt Bar; they feared it, and were blameless in their fear. The bar on a rampage was a thing to re- spect; the alternative was likely to be gale steamed the ancient Elk River, every seam and plank in her wooden hull straining as she plunged in the heavy seaway. Ten knots was her approximate speed as she approached the bar-bound fleet. Seven knots were supplied by her laboring, trem- bling engines and three by wind and wave. A leaky, small, under-powered, battered tub. Built in the early eighties, she had for years narrowly flirted with inspectors’ con- another ship as a permanent addition to the graveyard of the Humboldt sands. Up from the south on the wings of the demnation. On her bridge, engine-room telegraph ready to his hand, stood her skipper, peering intently into the cloud of spume arising from the seething bar ahead. For years Steve Johnson had held down the bridge of “the old sieve’ as he fondly termed her. He was known as the most daring navigator on the coast. Behind his back seamen called him “Midnight” Johnson. The reason for this title was one of the favorite yarns of coast- wise mariners who delighted in his daring exploits, at the same time envying him for them. Johnson was nearly forty; he looked a scant thirty. His hair, even at the tem- ples, rivaled the hue of a raven. His clear gray-blue eyes had the ready twinkle of a smile; and the corners of his firm mouth 68, MICLOOOKS (C@