Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 4, 1926 — page 86: what you’re looking at

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

396 mouth gaping, eyes closing spasmodically under the sting of briny spray. Realiza- tion had flashed to him that the man, now bending to his work over the companion- way, could not hear his words. More, he could not hear them himself! A voice, mightier than the voices of a host of humans, was sounding, wailing, thunderous, terrible; the voice of the storm, now deepened in seven-fold fury, caught his own puny speech, and flung it back in his strangling throat. An instant he stood, weaving and chok- ing, his feet instinctively clutching for foot- » hold on the wet and sliding deck. His senses were numbed by his sudden entry into the wallowing fury that had, in the little time since he had taken Judith be- low decks, crescendoed. He had left wild- ness; he now stared into chaos. Hedged with opaque gloom, the Psyche’s lights trembled forth a little way, to be lost in the combing crests of moun- tainous seas, weird, gray, monstrously in- choate, like the visionings of madmen. The next instant, as the yacht plunged down into the trough, even these shimmer- ings of reassurance were extinguished. The dim form of the seaman next to Fenwick was blotted out; he could not see his hand before his face. For the moment a blind terror seized his spirit. It could have been no darker under the waters than it was now above them; he felt an intolerable sense of suf- focation, as if he were drowning under the waves. : Up climbed the Psyche again, like some dogged creature indigenous to the deeps. Up again into the bared fangs of the waves, and again the trembling rays went search- ing as if for massed battalions of armed men. Now a far more powerful shaft of radi- ance swung slowly into the arc of Fen- wick’s strained vision, illumining the boiling wastes for a great distance. It was the yacht’s searchlight, shifting from the opposite side. It revealed an appalling danger. The seaman had just finished battening - down the companion-hatch. Now he re- Coiled, colliding with Stephen. Instinctively % : -: ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. they clutched each other. Full in the searchlight’s flare a giant wave in a solid wall of towering death bore down upon the yacht. — 7 In the instant some bits of reasoning ob= servation, grotesquely disassociated, stirred Stephen’s brain. This was the end! The sleeping girl, she would never know! Why had he not remained below, to meet death with her? The four winds wrestled together in this hell; the waves whirled in a cauldron; death raced to swallow life now! With a roar like the thrum of doom the giant billow broke, and raked the deck. Stephen and the seaman were now locked in a desperate embrace as the yacht reeled sidewise. The wash caught them, overwhelmed them, spun them, reeling, across the deck. Then, snarling, it re- ceded as the Psyche, that had somehow survived the crashing impact, numbly reeled to an even keel. Strangling, nearly senseless, half- drowned, they heard roaring of waters, smashing of bulwarks, thud of metal fall- ing, the splintering of woodwork under tons of brine and spume, as the deck was washed clear of everything movable. Stephen had landed against the rail with force that brought from his lips a strangled groan of pain. He lay for a moment me- chanically groping for realities, fighting for breath; through his side darted an agon- izing pain. He feared dully that his ribs had been broken. But as his head cleared and he drew a long breath, he realized that he had only been badly bruised. The yacht was still pitching and rolling horribly, but she seemed to be fairly swim- ming in calmness compared with the grind- ing crash that had just occurred. Fenwick struggled to his knees. He stared down into chaos. Again the yacht had dipped into the hollow of a wave. But now came a flare of lightning, accompanied with a smash of thunder. Upturned to him was the seaman’s face, livid, with closed eyes. “Knocked out!” muttered Fenwick. Stephen stooped, and despite the pain the effort cost him in his wrenched state, raised the heavy body, and slung it limp- ly over a shoulder. The yacht lurched Eomicbooks €ol