Adventure Magazine Cover — page 101: what you’re looking at

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

Dynamite Stories head-on, then veered abruptly, just as she went alongside. At that instant, the doomed Japanese crew sprang their mine. The explosion blew in the whole side of the huge warship, and hurled her decks and guns high in air. She went down in frag- ments, like a rain of stones. The patriotic death of the Japanese was accomplished in the same moment. Such bravery in the service of their country may have been equaled in history, but certainly it has never been excelled. BREAKING HIS NERVE UST back upon the hills that rise up from the southern shores of Lake Hopatcong there is one of the most impor- tant dynamite-works in the country. James Wentworth began his labors there, first as an errand-boy at the age of twelve, soon after the works started. It was his brag that he had grown up with the works, but that he had never gone up with them when by some freak of chance a packing-house or a nitroglycerin apparatus would be blown to the four winds of heaven, spraying wreck- age of men and timber over the whole celes- tia! concave. Jim had no lack of courage. He had worked in every department of the business: had made nitroglycerin, nitro-gelatin, and 665 had become one of the most skilful dyna- mite-packers. As he did piece-work, he made money rapidly. One day, at a church strawberry festival, he was drawn into the vortex of that swirl- ing passion—love—and married. The young wife importuned him to give up the dynamite business, as he had already laid up sufficient money to start him in another field. Yielding to her wishes, he gave notice that his resignation was to take effect at the end of two weeks. On the third day of the period of his notice, on the advent of the noon-hour, he was seized with an uncontrollable impulse to take his dinner-pail and himself out of the packing-house where he was working. He said afterward that he got to thinking: “Suppose this packing-house should blow up; what would become of Susie?’’—to say nothing of his own dispersion. He went to the top of a little knoll to eat his dinner, in full view of the packing-house, continuing his pessimistic reflections. The place began to look suspicious. For the first time in his life, he felt fear. On a sudden that packing-house became a white, dazzling ball of flame, and he was knocked down by the concussion. He told the superintendent that the three days he had served on his notice must suf- fice. He had lost his nerve! COMMICMOOCKKS. CO