Adventure Magazine Cover — page 142: what you’re looking at

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

136 semicircle of shallow, tumultuous water formed by the main chain of the Western Rocks on the one side, and by Annet, the Hellweathers, and divers small islands and rocks—such as the one that had claimed the cutter—on the other. The half circle is broken in the middle by several small chan- nels, of which Gorregan Neck is the largest. All this was perfectly plain on the chart, but what met Miller’s gaze was a phan- tasmagoria of churning white water and rocks that seemed to leap out of the sea, frolic upon it for an instant in fiendish glee, and then disappear to lie in wait for venture- some keels. Through the Western Rocks, that Rob had viewed from the outside that day, the gale was hurling the green waters of the Atlantic. Seen from this side, the scene was utterly different. Now the Crebawethans, Jacky’s Rock, Rosevear, Rosevean, Pednathise Head, all seemed in- adequate to their task of repelling the sea. For here, to leeward of them it could be seen that the granite barrier split and threshed the crashing waves into a night- mare of thundering white foam, but it could not prevent solid masses of water from charging through the openings between the various rocks. ‘They stood like a wall that had been breached at a dozen places by the assaults of a persistent, unconquerable foe. And into the semicircle cauldron of crazy waters, through the wide opening at the top, rushed the tide, setting across the rush- ing streams and bending them into unbe- lievable gyrations. Into this wild area Miller, trusting in deep water shown plainly by the chart, had raced bound for Gorregan Neck. He was in a worse plight than had confronted Sir Ansel. Amid the bewildering currents, the boiling sea, and the winds that whistled over the Rocks, he was struggling to steer a course—any course—that would leave main and mizzenmasts in his boat and give her enough way against the sucking tide to avoid the ledges and granite masses that stuck out of the sea like hard, giant fists. He had no time now to consult chart and compass, for malicious currents whirled his yawl about, making sport of his rud- der’s most positive attempts at control. Waves pounded at bow and bottom until it seemed at every moment that rock, not water, assailed her planking. He spent his strength in avoiding imagined rocks in the deep, rioting waters around him. RICHARD HOWELLS WATKINS Slowly the tide was having its way with him, drawing him southward toward that very channel he had been so bent, minutes before, in racing through. Every attempt he made to keep a course to northward and safety merely drew him toward the Hell- weathers and the rocks off Annet. Miller was doomed if he fought on to northward; doomed by eventual exhaustion, since he was attempting the impossible. Rob Trevellick stared at the plunging yawl and the agitated man wrenching this way and that at the tiller, with hard, bitter eyes. His hand was firm on the tiller now. ‘The Rocks!’ he whispered to himself. “They’re still there—waitin’ for me. Did ’ee think ’ee could outwit ’em? There’s three fools ’mong the Rocks now. And the big- gest o’ them all’d be ’ee, Rob Trevellick, if ’ee tried to save yon simpleton wi’ a splin- tered boom in your boat.” He laughed shortly as the yawl took a smother of foam over her bow and Miller flung himself on the tiller to swing her head away from the phantom ledge. Sir Ansel, rousing himself from his absorption in the spectacle of his rival fighting for his life, turned horrified eyes upon the fisherman. “Why don’t ’ee laugh, too?’”’ demanded Rob Trevellick savagely. ‘‘’Twas to see he drowned ’ee came to Scilly, wasn’t it? Laugh, man, laugh!” The Banner had been edging her way to windward on short legs with the tide and long legs against it, keeping in the channel just outside that half circle of dancing death. In this way, despite the splintered boom that threatened to snap into pieces with the strain of the wind, the Banner regained some of the ground she had lost in that wild run down to the cutter. Rob, his mood of mockery gone, was fighting within himself a battle far harder than Miller waged in the laboring yawl. “Fool!” he muttered. “’Tis not Rob Trevellick’s life, ’tis little Luke’s chances that go smash if ’ee try to save un. Die now an’ he’ll be a fisher, too, among th’ old rocks—and his young uns after he. What if ’ee are a lifeboatman—’tis no lifeboat but a cripple you’re in now.” He glanced again at the dancing yawl, and then at Great Crebawethan to get his position. As the Banner swung around under his hand he slacked off the sheet to take as much strain as he could off the creaking boom. DOOLK C©