Adventure Magazine, Mid-September 1917 — page 179: what you’re looking at

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

On the Account between the two other stems, as he had watched it when they had passed through under Tom the Turtler’s pilotage. They were hard and fast, seas were breaking above the wreck of the foremast. Denton came to him, his head bloody from a falling spar. ‘Tis some trick,” he gasped. ‘Some trick of that cursed, shark-eyed turtler.”’ “‘Hell’s' furies,’” cried Bane. ‘‘Up the mainmast, one of ye! If they’ve seen us strike they'll be after us with Boarding crews. Up!” A man sprang into the main rigging and mounted. “They are putting off from the corvette,”’ he shouted. ‘Three boats—four!’’ Bane jumped into action. “Up with the boarding-nettings,” he yelled. “Clear away some of that mess for’ard. Serve out pikes and_ cutlases. Train the stern-chaser on the channel. Do they seem to know the passage, aloft there?” ‘Making straight for it.” Bane dived below and chose his sidearms and his sword, an Arabian weapon, curved like a scimitar, of matchless steel. On deck again he brought a semblance of order out of confusion. The Venture had swung sideways with the tide, blocking the chan- nel. The stern-chaser had burst its tackles and broken through the taffrail. 2 A group of pirates worked to get it into position before the king’s men appeared. One trunnion had slipped its socket and the gun lay athwart its carriage. A heavy net- ting of rope was raised above the rail. Muskets were piled with stacks of boarding pikes and the cornered crew prepared to resist. —/ THE leading cutter appeared, . spray flying from the spurting blades. Another followed it, the men huz- zaing as they caught sight of the trapped pirate. Haul and heave as they might, Bane’s men could not get the stern gun into position. All four of the king’s boats, crowded with men, were now racing down the lane that was pitted with musket balls. Here and there a rower slumped but the boarding was a matter of only a hundred yards dash from the turn in the channel. With a cheer, the cutters swept under the counter and alongside, jumping for the low freeboard, clinging to the netting while they 177 slashed at it with cutlas and knife, tearing . it loose with a grappling iron and swarming across the rail, parrying pike and blade, leaping to the decks and breaking up into a series of hand-to-hand combats, little swirls of men that engaged and broke apart leaving here and there one prone, sliced with a keen edge or shot by a pistol that singed the flesh at close quarters. The hot sun shone down on the mélée. There was the stamp of feet, the sound of oaths, of shots, the smell of blood that stained the decks, lay in sluggish puddles or joined the dark stream in the scuppers; the taste and scent of powder gas, films of smoke above the struggling masses as the men from the Juno drove the pirates for- ward to where the fallen foremast partly blocked the deck; man to man, cursing as bullet or blade went home, gasping their diminishing breath as the others trampled upon them, sliding on the canted deck, soon slippery with gore. Todd was the second man aboard. Cap- tain Sawtrell beat him by a split-second. A pirate thrust at him with a pike as he stood on the rail but the point wavered and fell as Todd fired full in the man’s face and leaped to the deck. He had caught sight of Bane, his sword flashing as it rose and fell, his voice rising above the general up- roar in defiant curses.’ Sawtrell pressed toward him and Todd followed, eager to reach the buccaneer captain and settle his score. Two men closed in upon them and Sawtrell turned to engage one of them, dexterously parrying the forceful but clumsy swing of the cutlas and running his opponent through with his sword as a cook would spit a joint. Todd broke through the other’s guard and sliced the man’s upper arm. His strength seemed doubled and he strode over the fallen man in exultant fury, pressing ahead of the Juno’s commander to where Bane’s sword, red now, whistled above his head as he charged through the knot of sailors who surrounded him, and led a group of pirates to the rescue of Scarry-Dick, hard-pressed by the rail. A jumble of men, cutting and thrusting, swept Todd aside for the moment. He dropped a burly giant with the bullet from his second pistol and felled another with the butt. The fighting mob divided and he sprang through the opening. Scarry-Dick seemed to spring up through the deck be- CoOMmiclsoo C©