Adventure Magazine Cover — page 141: what you’re looking at

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

EAST OF THE BISHOP Rob Trevellick groaned. He could not take his eyes off the cutter, which now was sailing as close to the wind as a boat could get. Her bow was pointed away from danger, but her progress was infinitesimal, and just a point or so off her port bow raged white water, warning of a shoulder of the headland just beneath the surface. It was quite plain to Rob that she was bound for destruction, for beyond that headland, well away from the island itself, was a waste of huge boulders, standing up in the sea. And Sir Ansel could not tack, he had no speed to swing his cutter’s head around. The trim white yacht crept on, clearing the headlands, and Sir Ansel looked up—to see new dangers in his path. Reluctantly Rob’s hand moved his tiller. He swung the Banner from her safe course in the Broad Sound and bore toward Annet. He felt no exhilaration of danger; his heart was lead heavy in his chest. Well he knew what happened to men who challenged the power and spite of the Rocks in a gale like this. His eyes, beneath half-closed lids, studied the swells ahead of him. The cutter was just on the edge of the rocks off Annet. There was clear water ahead until there. The boom of the mainsail was over to port, and the Banner was flying head on toward the cutter. As he came closer he caught a glimpse of the cutter’s helmsman gripping the tiller tightly, staring with fascinated eyes at the rocks just to lee- ward. The boat was practically on them now. Gripping the tiller with his right hand, Rob curved his left about his mouth, and hailed lustily. “Ho! Ho! Ho!’ he roared, all the power of his seaman’s voice rushing out of his throat. Against that feeble human cry was the roar of water cascading over an iron coast, but either the hail reached Sir Ansel or the loom of the Banner’s sail aroused him. He looked up, to see the fishing boat rushing head on toward him, with Rob standing in the stern, waving him to jump. The impulsive, heedless streak that had gotten Sir Ansel into his difficulties now served him well. The cutter’s bow rose high on a white-topped surge that knocked it sideways toward the rocks. The crash of the impact seemed to fill Sir Ansel’s ears and jar his flinching body, even before it came. He sprang to the edge of the 135 counter, and balanced there, somehow, as his boat crashed down in the first of the blows that were to beat her bottom out. The Banner’s bow surged by. He leaped from his unstable place and tumbled head- long into the big cockpit of the fisherman’s boat. “Stand by to gybe!’’? shouted Rob in- stantly, and swung his tiller over. The bow of the flying Banner reeled to port, swerving from the menacing shoulder of Annet that seemed thrusting out like a sword to pierce the oncoming boat. Rob, standing with the tiller gripped be- tween his legs, hauled in on the mainsheet with hand leaping over hand, but the turn- ing boat was quicker than he. The wind, catching in the other side of the huge main- sail as the Banner swung around, snapped the sail across the boat with the swiftness of a cracking whip. There was a sudden crash, and the boom of the mainsail splin- tered from end to end. Rob Trevellick raised his head and ap- praised the damage with grim, swift eyes, the while his hand set the Banner on a course that would take him inside the Old Wreck Ledge. An overwhelming relief swept over him. The sea had failed again. “T cheated ’em,”’ he shouted and laughed aloud. ‘‘Cheated the Rocks an’ a split ina spar all the harm they could do I! Beat ’em for once!” The boom, although split, was not broken; the mast was weakened, to be sure, but still in its step. “You're lucky, I tell ’ee, man,” he assured the white-faced Sir Ansel. He nodded astern. The cutter, ground by the rocks, was on her side; and white water surged through her bottom and out of the cockpit. Her mast drifted with the tide, and tugged at the wreck, as if trying to drag it farther into that bed of jagged destruction. Rob wasted only a glance at the splintered wreck; then turned to look for Miller. And his strong red hand went weak on the tiller, and he groaned aloud. He had laughed at the Rocks too soon. Miller in the yawl was in trouble—so much trouble that he had not noticed his rival’s plight. Apparently the course the two men had laid out on the chart for their race was not out to the Bishop, but through the plainly marked channel of Gorregan Neck. He had ventured into that great COmicloo SS C© 5}