Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

42 “A galley-bird, like enough,” said Jim Rimble. ‘Well, what to do now. We can’t ' wait here all night. I think I’m getting ready to feel a breeze now, and if that ship gets away from us’— he wagged his head at Nancy as if to say that further words absolutely failed him—‘“I’m for shoving off. We've given him a chance. What more could he ask?”’ “Let me look for him,” replied Nancy, and lowered herself through the hatchway. If it had been dark on deck, the black- nesS was impenetrable in the hole in which she now found herself. The water in the hold was not so deep here as she had seen it aft that day, but it was above her waist as she felt her way slowly forward, search- ing for the man she knew was there some- where, but whether dead or alive she could not tell. At last she found him, when she had all but abandoned the hope of doing so. He had crawled upon one of the timbers fas- tened into one of the carling knees, and must have fainted there from heat and thirst, and was still unconscious, for Nancy could detect no sign of life in him. She reproached herself for having let that day of storm and stress, and that some- thing new that had come into her life to make her a dreamer, drive him from her memory. She pushed his great bulk into the water, and towing him back to the hatchway, call- ed up. Presently the men brought a tackle and hauled him out and laid him upon the deck. Jim Rimble, thereupon, ran off as fast as he could go, and returning to the longboat and stating the case to the Captain, came back in no great time with a horn of water which he poured into the empty, tongue- less gullet of the dumb man. This and the night air revived him. His eyelids fluttered, and presently they opened, and those strange and awful yellow eyes were staring up at them. And so they bore him back into the longboat and laid him down. The men taking their places once more, they shoved off, and the Bap- tiste was left to herself. No bodings of ill came to haunt the girl. Her mind was at rest; but the simpler na- ture of the boy was stirred. He came to her, when he gave over his oar after a while to one of the men, and bending down so that none might hear, he said— Adventure “We have done a bad night’s work, Mademoiselle.’’ That was all. But the words found lodg- ment in her very soul, and she could not rid herself of them. CHAPTER X ST. GEORGE FOR ENGLAND "TE men bent to their oars and pulled along in silence, with a long, easy, stroke. The Captain at the helm held the longboat on a course that should fetch her up with the ship if the air did not freshen too soon; for the dead, flat calm had lasted since sundown, and the vessel could not have sailed much beyond the place where they had last seen her topsails in the en- gulfing darkness. The men rowed steadily, and what with the mystery of the night and their exhaus- tion, and the torturing thirst in their throats, were in no mood for talk. They were as Still as the dumb man who lay gasp- ing in the bottom of the boat at Nancy’s feet, his yellow eyes staring up at the sky. The first faint ribbons of dawn fluttered above the eastern rim of the sea and the ‘timid stars slipping away, a deeper dark- ness than that of midnight thickened around them for a while, until, of a sudden, the lordly sun was among them, and it was day. Out of the fleeting mists to starboard emerged the ship, with the sails already un- furling upon her spars. “Sail ho!”’ softly called Pierre, the look- out in the bow, but all had seen her. As they looked there came a ripple across the placid waters. The sails filled now, catching the first faint breath of the morn- ing, and the Spanish Ancient fluttered in the breeze. Her canvas bellied and she was off upon her course. “TI knew she was a Don,” whispered Jim Rimble to himself, and lay back upon his . Oar. The Captain ordered him forward, then, and a flaw striking them, he hauled the sail up and they went about ship, and, getting the wind of the Spaniard, they bore down upon he. on the quarter, and so came upon her out of the vapor that hung above the sea, before she could get under way upon the other tack. Before the alarm was given, and the Spaniard’s crew came tumbling up, the CoOMmicboooks ©