Adventure Magazine Cover — page 105: what you’re looking at

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

Yankee Tricks you were a real seventy-four instead of a Sham. You'll need more than wooden guns - to beat him off.” “Well, I’ve got a Long Tom and some hght carronades out of the Sxapping Turtle,’ drawled Asa Swift. “Looks lke your friend was getting ready to give us a broadside.” The two ships were rapidly approaching each other on the converging lines of an acute angle. As soon as the Audacious came within range, she let drive with her entire starboard battery. A few eighteen- pound solid-shot buried themselves deep in the Nabob’s massive timbers, while the rest flew shrieking overhead, punching neat round holes through the straining canvas, cutting stays and halyards, splintering masts and spars. Obviously the frigate’s gunners were aiming high, to cripple the fugitive and check her flight till the pursuers astern could come within range. A second broadside followed; then a third. But gunnery was a despised and neglected art on most ships of the British Navy in 1812. What little damage was done was repaired by the Nabod’s nimble seamen before anything carried away. Observing this and being a firm believer in Nelson’s maxim that if you get near enough to the enemy you can not miss, the captain of the Audacious decided to hold his - fire until the two ships were within easy musket-shot. Then he would wear and continue on a parallel course, pounding the Yankee hammer and tongs. But Asa Swift had not served three years in the Royal Navy without learning its routine tactics. Anticipating this very maneuver, he uttered a crisp command. Round swung the Nabob’s head to port, and across the narrow strip of water between them she hurled herself straight at the frigate’s broadside. By all the contemporary rules of the game the Audacious should have raked the Nabob fore arid aft. But nothing is so nerve- shaking as the utterly unexpected. Ram- ming had gone out with oars and not vet come back with steam. At the sight of their huge adversary charging bows-on and looming high above them, the astonished gunners hit nothing in particular. But there was nothing whatever . the matter with their captain’s seamanship. His crew were well drilled, the Audacious was French-built and uncommonly handy, 95 and her head was already beginning to fall off to leeward. Round she swung on nee heel so smartly that the Naéed only strv«:: her a glancing blow on the starboard quarter and then came rubbing and grinding alongside. ““Grapple her! Grapple her! Stand by to board!” rang the commands from the English frigate. The Audacious had a crew of two hundred and forty men; the Nabob a scant hundred. And so many, of those were needed to handle the East Indiaman’s cumbersome top-hamper that a scant two dozen were left to man the port rail. Each of these men held a large gunny-sack containing some héavy, cylindrical object. Snatching a lighted linstock from the fuse- tub placed beside him, each Yankee thrust it into the mouth of the sack, as if igniting a fuse. Then swinging the sack with all the strength®of his sturdy arms, he hurled it over the rail to fall on the crowded deck of the Audacious. Captain Carteret-Carstairs, looking down from the Nabob’s lofty poop, saw the falling gunny-sacks burst like shells, some in mid- air, others as they struck the deck. Through the smoke of the explosions he could see men stagger and fall as the close-packed masses were riddled by a myriad missiles. Bullets and jagged fragments hummed and shrieked through the air about him, or fell pattering unnoticed at his feet. But the Nabob towered so high above the frigate that her own crew were comparatively sheltered. More of the uncouth projectiles came hurtling down from the tops, where the green-coated marines were briskly exchang- ing shots with their red-coated foes. These bombs burst with less noise and scattered a burning powder that gave out clouds of pale smoke. Whoever breathed it burst into a violent fit of coughing and sneezing, while tears poured from his eyes. Holding wet sponges over their eyes and noses, the Nabob’s men hacked blindly at the grapnels till the last one parted and the two ships drew apart. As the clean wind swept away the awful fumes, Carteret- Carstairs heard a tremendous crash aloft. Looking up with streaming eyes, he saw the mizzen topmast dangling. It had been shot off just above the cap. Looking astern, he saw that the other three frigates were now within range and NOOK (C@