Adventure Magazine Cover — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

Yankee Tricks “Thar’s a king's ship in sight and making for Falport harbor!” A bombshell with a sputtering fuse could not have cleared the room more rapidly. Soldiers, seamen and civilians jumped up from the table and out through the nearest door or window to Main Street, where all stood staring to seaward. It was a bright, clear day in early September, and the nature of the vessel tacking toward them up Vine- yard Sound was plain to their practised eyes. ‘“‘Man-o’-war brig,”’ said Swift’s partner, Noah Bloggs. ‘English all over.” “Boxer class,” affirmed Asa Swift, who had seen forced service in the British Navy. “Carries eighteen 18-pounder carronades, sails like a haystack and fights like a bull- dog. We could sail rings around her in open sea, but tide’s too low for us to cross the bar before she’ll be right off the harbor mouth. Noah, we’re blockaded.” ““We’re worse’n that. What’s to keep the Britishers from coming right in and taking the Nabob back again?” “Fort Gosnold,” replied Swift, indicating the new earthwork of raw red clay on Fal- port Point, at the entrance to the harbor. “That mud heap!” exclaimed Bloggs contemptuously. ‘The guns for the fort are still somewhere on the road betwixt here and Boston and you know it!” “But does the Britisher know it?” asked Swift shrewdly. “I suppose you’re going to march your men out to the fort now, Colonel?”’ The militia officer nodded. “Tf the English see that it’s garrisoned, -they may hold off long enough for the guns to get here. It won’t do any harm to try.”’ “T’ll send you some fixings to help try with,” said the captain. “Starbuck, my lad, run and tell your uncle to bring his sloop alongside. To the boats, all hands!” mere THE privateersmen ran down the es Be ate sandy street to the water-front, em- BEE barked, shoved off and pulled out to where the huge Nabob rode at anchor. The tall East Indiaman seemed not only too large for the tiny haven but altogether too well armed to worry a the eighteen-gun brig in the offing. Black/muzzles yawned from her open ports, to the classic number of seventy-four. | “Bend a whip to the mainyard, Mr. Gif- ford, hoist out one of the spar-deck guns 87 and be ready to lower it on to Starbuck’s deck when his sloop comes alongside,” said Swift to his first officer. The gun, a long forty-two pounder, was lifted from its carriage and swung out overside, as the sloop drew near. Suddenly a badly-secured lashing slipped. The great gun dropped down. into the water—and floated! ‘Stick a boat-hook into it, Uncle Zeb,’’ called Swift to the grinning elder Starbuck. “I’m sending half-a-dozen of these Quakers out to the fort.” “Hope they’ll scare the Brae ez bad ez they scared the deacon,’ drawled Uncle Zeb Starbuck, and a laugh went up from ship and sloop. The Nabob was an early, though by no means the earliest, example of a camou- flaged ship. Her ingenious and economical English owners had made her in every out- ward detail an exact copy of a British battleship of the line. So formidable was the likeness that all the way from Bombay to Cape Finisterre, French frigates and Yankee privateers had taken one look and then clapped on all sail to escape. Among the latter was the Falport schooner Active, owned and skippered by Deacon Terwilliger, known to all Cape Cod as the man who was “mean enough to skin a louse for the hide and taller.” © The deacon, anxious to cover his retreat and chancing to fall in with his fellow- townsmen Swift and Bloggs in their little home-made privateer Snapping Turtle, had generously totd them of the “‘big homeward- ‘bound Britisher’” which he implied could be captured at the expense of a little fighting. Intending to deceive, he spoke the literal truth. The Snapping Turile emerging from a dense rain-squall, suddenly found herself so close under the Nabob’s guns that those imposing weapons were seen to be only dummies of painted wood. Bringing the two ships board and board with a shock that carried away their own foremast, the Yankee privateersmen had swarmed over the Nabob’s rail and taken her with scarcely a shot or a blow. The English crew were given the crippled . Snapping Turtle to work then passage home in, while the Americans stood for Falport in their splendid prize. On the way they fell in with the deacon, who betrayed his real opinion of the Nabob by throwing overboard all his guns and DOOLK C©