Adventure Magazine Cover — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

120 Heddon saw men hurrying about her deck, and guessed at once what was up. He clapped a hand to Pelew’s shoulder, said: “If we don’t look out we’re going to be in for it! Get rifles up here and man the rails. Then stand by to get that yard around! That fellow there is up to something!”’ Pelew’s bold eyes brightened; his wide mouth hung parted for a moment in a wide grin, then he bolted for the rifles. There was a stand of them in the ’tween decks cabin. The captain of the Rosa Meade, evidently thinking that his force would be strength- ened by having the bark’s prisoners on board, suddenly lowered away a boat. It took three trips to carry off the men; and as the last man went over the side, the bark hauled her yard around, got before the wind and started with rifles from the schooner’s deck, less than two hundred yards off, banging away. No one was hit. Heddon and Pelew both led the work aloft, hurrying to get as much sail set as possible. The schooner lost time in having to pick up her boat, then headed out to windward, plainly enough hoping to outsail the bark, bear alongside, drive men to cover with rifle fire and overhaul the Jack-Gzrl. It was squally weather. The bark, short-handed and heavy with sail, in three hours heeled under in as many squalls in a way that shook men about the deck and jarred the fight out of most of the crew, who seemed to think it better to be captured than capsized. “Do we carry on, mister!”’ Pelew shouted across the reeling deck. And Heddon answered— “Nothing comes down till it blows away!” “Hear that! Hear that, you —— lub- bers!” Pelew bawled at men who had shouted their fears. ‘‘You’ll be sailors when we're done with you!” Whisky was passed. Men drank with gobbling gulps and grew reckless. The schooner was not much of a schooner, but something of a bulldog and hung on. The Lords of the Wind seemed having a joke. Under the squall flurries, the bark went with a staggering gallop, like a thing in fright, but in the light wind between squalls the schooner had the best of it, and twice came close enough to open fire at long range; then at the end of the fourth hour she ran up abreast less than a half mile off, Gordon Young gybed recklessly and on the new tack began to bear down. A shower of bullets flew about the bark’s deck, and men at the windward rail returned the fire, wildly. T’eeay Layeen stood on the quarter-deck and did not then nor afterward take cover. Said Heddon, standing beside young Rae- burn to help with the wheel: “Tf he’s not afraid, he’s a brave man. If he is afraid and wants to make us think he isn’t—he’s braver still. But in either case, a —— fool!”’ “How about yourself—standin’ here!’’ said Raeburn. “I have to stand by a fool helmsman!”’ said Heddon, and a moment later as a bullet nicked a spoke of the wheel, Heddon struck the boy aside as if in anger and took the wheel himself. The men of the schooner were concentrating their fire on the bark’s wheel. “Why don’t you use a rifle!’ Heddon shouted at T’eeay Layeen who had come near as if to take the wheel when Heddon dropped. “T do not shoot good, like Englishmen,” said the calm Chinaman. Pelew’s hat was shot away, one he had fished out of a Jack-Girl’s sailor sea-chest, a good black Sunday-ashore hat; and Pelew, wrathfully, as if the hat were to blame, turned back, jumped to it, stamped on it, then picked it up, looked for the hole, clapped it down tightly on his head, wanting the shade of its brim on his eyes, then re- turned to the rail and began shooting. He was the noisiest fighter that Heddon had ever seen, but there was no doubt about his willingness to stay in a fight. “T got ’im, Will! I got ’im!”’ young Rae- burn shrieked, standing up, turning toward Heddon, as the schooner’s helmsman reeled drunkenly backward and fell. But another man was at the wheel before the fellow had dropped. “Shut up, you idiot!’ Heddon thundered. “It’s not to be proud of!” T’eeay Layeen brushed with unhurried movement at his ear to drive away the whine of a bullet that lingered there. Bullets were flying all about. A man of the crew dropped, shot through the head. A moment later one of the Chinese coolies threw up his hands, yelled, dropped, tumbled about as if struggling with an in- visible devil, then lay still. Go DOOLK (©