Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 4, 1926 — page 87: what you’re looking at

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

WAR SPAWN. sickeningly. Fenwick’s feet slipped, his side banging into the rail. : Giddy with pain, his lips tightened with savage defiance as he recovered, and took two staggering steps aft. Another light- ning flash showed just ahead of him the dripping oil-skinned figures of two seamen, fighting for foothold. He reached them, plucking at a hand feeling along the rail. The men turned. “ Hurt!” bawled Stephen in his ear. “‘ Banged against rail—wave! Get him be- low. Call doctor!” The two men relieved him of his bor den, and staggered away. Stephen turned toward the dim glow, lost in alternating moments in seething rain, which marked the location of the wheelhouse. He had forgotten his original errand, to inquire regarding the booming of a distant gun, and the Psyche’s response in kind. Would the dawn find the yacht still floating, with her living freight, he won- dered. In reply to his. query a fresh blast of wind in this instant sought out the yacht, as if it would blow the craft from the face of the waters. It sucked the air from Stephen’s lungs, and for a moment he crouched by the railing, gasping. There welled in him a dull anger against this derisive destructive element that for- ever defies man, who, though he has har- nessed the lightning, is powerless before the wind. Both hands gripping the rail, Stephen wormed his way, inch by inch, against the resisting wind toward the wheelhouse. In a portentous lull, which lasted no more than a moment before chaos resumed with renewed fury, he caught from over his head a weird, droning, sputtering sound. The Psyche’s operator was at the key of the wireless apparatus. Just then the furor of waves created by the last onslaught of the wind, rose to a maximum of ferocity and swept across the deck, nearly tearing Fenwick from his hold. It left him shaking, not from physi- cal weakness; from something more dis- turbing, from fear. It was the fear of death! Until now he had never thought much - 397 about death. Several times, in moments of adventure, its black wings had brushed him. But it-had not seemed possible that one day the universal spectre would clutch him. In his glowing youth and splendid vigor it had seemed a ‘menace infinitely remote, nothing to be feared nor reckoned with in the present. But now it was here, waiting! Glower- ing with black face, lighted with eyes of writhing lightnings, sobbing and wailing in its tripled voice of rolling thunders, shrieking wind, crashing seas, gathering in- exhaustible power to overwhelm all life. For a terrible moment Fenwick fought the common human fear that sooner or later each spirit must encounter, perhaps early in life, perhaps at the supreme mo- ment itself, the horror of the unseen. It was an elemental terror caused by an elemental condition. What of the egoistic daring of puny man! In a frail fashioning of wood and steel to pit himself against the unleashed elements of the universe! ’ He was dimly conscious of a scien! of the impulse to make his way back to the cabin, to gather Judith in his arms. The sea had given her to him; now it wished to claim her again. She must not be left to meet the final mystery alone. Then curiously, in his distraction, came a sense of calming. Remotely he sensed it, a methodical something like the ticking of a watch. It neared him, coming closer till it finally entered his consciousness. It beat in his brain with rhythmic steadiness that gripped and fused his bewildered forces. At last he knew what it was! The throb- bing of marvelous machinery, like the beat- ing of a stout heart, that drove the ship on- ward through the storm! Fenwick felt kindling within him a kin- dred defiance, as he felt the pulsing of the craft. If she were destined to die, the Psyche would die fighting! A little later he staggered into the wheel- house. The helmsman was crumpled in a corner. Captain Lang, grim-lipped, tensed, steely-eyed, was at the wheel. He flashed Stephen. a glance; then again his eyes darted ahead. Comicbooks (E(0) Vee