Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 176: what you’re looking at

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

174 and waved his broad-brimmed felt hat with its dripping plume. The stocky figure in the stern of the long-boat looked round, waved back, whipped out a gleam- ing knife and cut the tow-rope. “Even so, we have filled enough casks today to last us to the rain-belt of the upper latitudes,” thought Diego, as he threw away his hat and dived from the saddle. ‘‘Good man, Gil!” "Round came the long-boat, starboard oars backing, port oars pulling, in a smother of foam and a crackling roar of Biscayan oaths from the mate. Diego swam swiftly out to meet it, his long rapier hampered him cruelly, but he would not part with it. He swam under water as much as possible, coming to the surface only for a hastily- snatched breath and diving again, for fear of arrows from the shore. But no arrows fell. Looking back as he swam, Diego saw the beach a solid mass of excited Japanese soldiery, and, in the front rank, archers lowering their bent bows at the imperative gestures of Kuru- shima, on horseback and in full armor at the water’s edge. “Heathen though he is,’ thought the grateful Spaniard, “there breathes not in all Christendom a more gallant knight and gentleman than Lord Kurushima!”’ THIRTY strokes more, and Gil Robles was helping him into the long-boat. Away they went for the San Gregorio, the boat’s crew pulling with every ounce they could throw into it, as they saw the swarming Japanese embark and push off from the shore. Taking a deep breath into his aching lungs, Diego stood up in the stern-sheets and blew a long call on the silver whistle hung ’round his neck. Back shrilled an answer from the boatswain on the ship; the soldiers’ trumpeter sounded the call to arms. Men swarmed up the galleon’s shrouds and lay out on the yards. *Round creaked the windlass, as the huge hempen anchor- cable writhed in through the hawse-hole like a frightened snake. Foresail and main- sail, huge single topsails—top-gallants and royals there were none—the little square spritsail under the high-steeved bowsprit and the tall, graceful lateen on the mizzen— all were set and the anchor apeak, as the long-boat shot ’round the San Gregorio’s bows and along her starboard side. Adventure Now the off-shore breeze brought her head ’round and her port battery to bear on the approaching Japanese flotilla. “Let them have it!” shouted Diego, as he came over the rail. Already loaded and run out, the nine culverins on the gun-deck and the light pieces on the poop and forecastle thundered together. Before the dense cloud of sul- furous smoke had lifted, the galleon was running, with the wind on her starboard quarter, for the open sea. “The saints be praised, the heathen are all slain!” cried a fat Manila silk-dealer, with pious fervor. ‘“‘Two boats sunk, one sinking, the rest coming on bravely,’ corrected Diego, peering through the lifting powder-smoke astern. ‘How craftily they follow in our wake—we have not a gun to bear. Lay aft the musketeers! Bid the master-gunner shift two culverins to the stern-ports!” “Why not round to, and give them another broadside?” asked Gil Robles. “IT dare not, in this narrow channel betwixt the inner haven and the sea,” replied the captain in a low voice. ‘Should we touch bottom, or the wind fail us before we reach open water, they will lay us aboard. And there are a thousand good fighting men in those craft, while we have less than three-score fit to bear arms. “Gentlemen,” he added in a louder voice, to the anxiously listening passengers, “arm yourselves and report for duty at your appointed stations. Be of good cheer, for it may be given us this day to uphold the honor of Spain! Rig the waist-cloths, there! Send round-shot up to the tops and yards! Make ready the bases, minions and murderer-guns! Pikemen, stand by the rail! Carpenter, make hot the pitch! Lieutenant Gomez, the after-castle is your charge; Sefior Robles, the forecastle is your station. I myself will hold the waist.” High-built at stem and stern were the galleons of those days; the forecastle was indeed a castle set in the fore part of the ship, the poop was another fortress towering aft. The low waist lay like a valley be- tween them; to raise its sides and make them harder for a foe to scale, strips of stout canvas, painted with gay armorial devices, were stretched along the top of the bulwarks from poop to forecastle. ‘These were the waist-cloths, ancestors of the nineteenth-century boarding-net. COnniclo@olK< (C@