Adventure Magazine Cover — page 128: what you’re looking at

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

884 Station, Great South Beach. Three crews of life-saving stations hurried to the scene to take seven men from the rigging of the wrecked vessel. All efforts to accomplish this, however, failed, and at noon of the day following the night of stranding, the vessels’s masts went by the board, with the exception of the foremast, in which all the crew save one had taken refuge. This single man who had not followed the example of his comrades was washed over- board when the after masts fell, and caught and clung to a piece of wreckage that was swept away simultaneously with himself. A remarkably furious surf was running, and to add to the peril of the situation, the breakers were full of floating timber and planks with which the Cromwell was laden. and which had been washed from her decks. The beach was fringed with skim ice, sharp as knife-blades, that cut through the rubber boots and clothing of the life-savers as though they were putty. Heavy ice-cakes a foot thick heaved in the breakers, lifted twenty feet in the air by the incoming mon- strous seas and crashed down on one another with sounds like the clash of distant thun- der. And over all, the snow and sleet whirled in scimitar sweeps, tearing the skin on men’s faces raw, and ripping the inrush- ing waves into tatters of foam and spind- rift. At the best, the chance of the wretched sailor who had been washed away on the floating wreckage was almost hopeless. The life-savers clustered on the shore, powerless to aid, watching with eyes of horror for the moment his lifeless body should be crushed on the beach or ground to pulp in the grind- ing wreckage. At this critical moment when the hearts of strong men stood still, a figure sprang from the huddle of men on the beach, wrapped a line about its waist and ran to the edge of the surf. Surfman Frank Ray- nor of the Blue Point Station was about to do what no keeper in the Life-Saving Ser- vice would have been authorized to ask him to risk. The Service demands courage, but it does not demand suicide. Keeper Rorke of the Blue Point Station might have or- dered Raynor back to the beach, but the venture was too heroic, too splendid; the keeper could not find it in his heart. For a moment Raynor stood in the edge of the foaming whirl of icy spray, waiting his chance, half naked, for he had thrown off his outer clothing. Then it came. As Adventure the bit of wreckage to which the sailor clung plunged into the mass of crashing débris in the breakers, Raynor dashed forward, fighting his way inch by inch through the roaring maelstrom of water and timbers, dodging plunging beams, diving beneath shattered spars that, rising on giant com- bers, threatened to crush him. At times he was hidden from view for minutes. At last he was almost within reach of the drowning sailor and in that instant he was swept beneath the wreckage by a ponderous sea. It looked as though he were lost, but at the crucial moment Albert Latham, also of the Blue Point Station, went to the aid of hiscomrade. Before Latham could reach him, Raynor came to the surface just in time to seize the now unconscious man. The next second Latham, tearing wildly through the surf, was at his side and render- ing assistance. Together the two hauled the exhausted man to the beach, while a cheer went up from their comrades on shore. IN THE brief ten minutes consumed in this rescue the ill-fated Cromwell had broken to pieces, her foremast ' falling into the sea with the six remaining men upon it. The life-savers flew to their gun and tried to shoot a line across the wreck of the mast, but failed, and one by one the men, save one, fell exhausted from it and were drowned before their eyes. The lone survivor held his place in mi- raculous fashion while the gale and current swept him down the shore at the edge of the breakers. Hope for him was given up, when again Raynor and Latham dashed to the front. Though exhausted and numbed, they plunged into the sea once more in time to reach the man just as he was torn from his grasp on the mast. | But now, enfeebled by their terrible efforts and the fearful cold, they faced a grave task to reach the shore with their rescue. For twenty minutes they battled with the surf, never relaxing their grip on the man who nearly drowned them in his frenzied struggles. Had it not been for a kindly green comber that, lifting beneath them, shouldered them close to shore, it is certain all three would have died. When the life-savers on the beach, rushing into the foaming sea, shoulder-deep, hauled them to safety, all were in a state of collapse. Raynor and Latham had probably per- formed one of the most courageous feats of cCOmiclbooks (©