Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 181: what you’re looking at

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

An Alaskan to Wild Geese galleon’s bows. The roar of a double explosion followed instantly. In obedience to the captain’s orders, the old master- gunner and his mates had dropped the last two barrels of powder, fitted with burning fuses, over the bows to blow away the tangled mass of wreckage and hawsers that held the ship a prisoner. By one of those rare miracles that sometimes crown supreme daring, the explosion had done its intended work without damaging the gal- leon. The San Gregorio, her bows heaved high in the air by the force of the concussion, shivered, and brought them down with a force that snapped the last strands which bound her. Urged by wind and tide, the galleon surged ahead, out of the mouth of the channel and into the open sea. Terrified by this fearful phenomenon, and by the fall of their invincible Daimio, most of the surviving Japanese turned and threw themselves overside. The rest cast down their weapons and begged for mercy, which was readily granted, for the San Gregorio was now too desperately short- handed to continue the fight. “Te Deum Laudamus!’’ sang the priests and friars in the chapel. Diego, kneeling on the crimsoned deck, 179 felt two soft arms steal ’round his neck, felt a kiss upon his cheek. “T saw it all,” whispered Ysabel. ‘Brave man! That other is dead, too; nothing can keep us apart any more.” “Nothing,” Diego answered; loosed the clinging arms. He had no thought of prayer, of thanks- giving for victory; no thought of his ship that he had saved; little even of the riches and the love he had won with the Lady Ysabel. His thoughts were all for his gallant foe. ‘He is dying,” he whispered to the girl, and turned once more to the prostrate Japanese, striving desperately to stanch the wound which he had himself inflicted. At the touch of Diego’s hand, Kuru- shima’s body stiffened, his eyes opened, his right arm instinctively raised itself and the sword to which his fingers still clung. His undaunted will forced the dying hand to lift it an inch, two inches, from the deck. Then, as his eyes met and recognized Diego’s, the battle-light died out of the Daimio’s face, and a smile of friendship shone faintly in its stead. The tired right hand relaxed its grip on the hilt. The sword fell clanging on the deck; the soul of the Samurai had passed. then he AN ALASHAN TO WILD GEESE by ED. L. GARSON AS EARLY dawn, or in the fading light, Past forests that now stand without a leaf, With weird and mournful cry from dizzy height Like spirits damned and groaning in their grief; In wedge formation marked against the sky Their southward way with cautious speed they take, So, following their leader, on they fly While Winter’s warnings follow in their wake. They know no rigors of the frost and cold, Far to the south they seek the sun-kissed seas; On never-freezing streams their wings they fold Or rest on limpid lake in balmy breeze; While we who have elected here to stay And face Alaskan gloom and cold intense, Will wonder as we watch their flight each day Which of us really shows the better sense. COnnicloool< (C@)