Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

76 Dugan leaped. By his two bare ankles Dugan seized him, and the Cuban’s head cracked solidly against the deck as the yell- ing giant with the red-gold beard straight- ened up. As if the little man had been a pound of lead at the end of a five foot string did Dugan swing him around his head. Laugh- ing, yelling; ripe with the lust for battle. Back before him shrank the two remain- ing Cubans, knives held up before their parted lips and wide eyes. As one man they glanced toward the smack, and almost as one man they leaped the bark’s rail, to fall any way at all on the deck of the smaller vessel. Still laughing, still swinging the little Cuban around and around his head, Du- gan walked to the rail, directly opposite the livewell in the smack. With one great heave and a burst of mirth he loosed his grip on the bare ankles. A great splash from the well—and Dugan turned to other things. The captain was getting up, gasping hard for his lost breath. Dugan swept up from the deck the loaded pistol that had been struck from his hand; picked up as well the knife the little Cuban had dropped. “Up!” he commanded the groaning fat man. ‘Up!’ The Cuban clambered to his feet, and with pistol muzzle and knife point Dugan urged him to the side; made him climb upon the rail. He steadied the trembling fat man until the little smack swung up and nestled against the side of the bark. “Jump!” yelled Dugan, hilariously, and he set the point of his knife a half inch in the greasy flesh. With surprizing power and willingness the captain jumped, and the splash in the well was even greater than before. The other three had disappeared. Loudly warning them to stay out of sight, Dugan slashed the lines which held the vessels together. Slowly the dirty fishing craft drifted away. “This,” said Dugan, as he watched the smack make sail, “may be more than I expected, but welcome nonetheless—as the cat said when she found the mouse swim- ming in the milk pail. ”Iwas the finest of fights while it lasted.” He was thinking, primarily, of the effort and risk involved in bringing the Blackfish safely into port or to a place where he could beach her. Adventure Before dusk that evening he could dis- tinguish the coast from the poop without using the glasses. It would be perhaps fifteen miles away. Still the breeze blew gently from the west; still the barometer heralded unfailing fair weather. At ten the moon arose, and he could see white water on the beach, for the wind had freshened slightly and the tide was start- ing in. Blind luck guided the Blackfish through the bars, for Dugan O’Day was a deep sea sailor and not wise in distinguishing chan- nels by slight variations in the color of the water and trifling differences in the breaking of the waves. But it was a fairly straight and rather broad channel, and he struck it just at the crest of high tide. Straight through Pasquil Pass went the Blackfish. Just inside the pass the channel ended in the one which went north and south behind the islands. Of this Dugan O’Day knewnothing, but steered straight on. Very gently the Blackfish rubbed her keel into the mud. At low tide there was some ten or twelve feet of water over the bar where it breasted the deeper channel; at high tide a couple more. Far up into the shallower water went the stem of the bark, raised as it was by the submerged stern. Driven on by the force of the tide and the west wind, and by her own little momentum, the Blackfish crept in jerks up into the mud. Then, with a tortured shriek, the wavering foremast fell, tangling in the bowsprit and hanging over the water. And Dugan O’Day slept peacefully in the saloon. The Blackfish had come ashore to die, if die she must, and part of his will was done. IN THE gray light of dawn he awoke, having been asleep not more "than two hours. Almost savagely he hailed the fishing skiff whose coming had awakened him. A tall, black-bearded man in the bow held a long sculling sweep; a youth crouched on a thwart in the stern. - But his anger faded before the mild voice of the fisherman. After all, it was no more than human nature to visit a wreck. So the two came aboard, squatting against the rail and listening raptly while Dugan talked. The sun arose, a great orb of gold, paint- ing the water of the bay with a score of vivid tints; casting a gentle romance over CORnNICLO© (©