The Argosy, Vol. 75, No. 4 — page 144: what you’re looking at

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

846 and knees, bringing up against the — wreck of the binnacle. The bark looked a wreck. The bow- sprit was driven in and splintered, the foretopmast gone half-way up, and the foreyard was sprung in the cap. The mainmast stood fast, but the mizzen had been cut away two feet above the deck and lay alongside, churning against the quarter, to which it was held by the lee shrouds, still un- cut. The binnacle was gone and the long felucca boom was a mass of splinters. “ Bear a hand now with an ax and clear away that wreck! That but’ll ‘start a timber next,” and Mr, Oakes sprang to the flattened poop bulwark. ‘Steady, there! Bend a hawser to them shrouds yonder and pay it out so we can use that wreck for a sea- anchor! ”’ Captain Blew sprang forward among us. “ Quick, all hands now! We've got to bring her head up. The mast in its fall has smashed the binnacle and the compass’s gone, to say nothing of the rudder driven into kindling-wood for the galley fire.” Mr, Oakes swore softly. Then all at once it seemed to me that the wind shifted and a great gray sun looked at us from a grayer sky, I re- member some one calling to me to: “Look aloft, there!” Then came a crash on my head, a blinding blaze of white light before my eyes, and all was dark. When I regained my consciousness I was in my berth and Mr, Oakes was holding a noggin of rum to my lips. I must have looked my question, for he said: “It was a block falling from aloft. It’s a wonder it didn’t kill you. Take this.” I drank and slept again. When I awoke I dressed and made my way painfully into the cabin, where Captain Blew sat solemnly sucking the back of his forefinger, while with the other hand he scrawled some figures with a piece of chalk upon a small blackboard. THE ARCOSY. “And this is hell! *Morning to you, Mr. Stephen! We're three men short—’” “Who? ” “Evans, Cooper, and Wilson, Car- ried away by a sea. Compass and rud- der gone. Bearings lost-——-I haven't seen the sun for four days. I can figure out my longitude, but I can’t tell within five hundred miles o’ where we are. What’s that? ’”’ “Land, ho!” was shouted from the deck, and Mr. Oakes appeared in the open square of the hatch to repeat the news. Both of us scurried for the deck where the men were gathered by the rail, gazing off at the blur of blue- ness to the southeast. | All that day we drifted landward, and not till evening could we make out the long line of nodding feathery palms fringing the golden sea-beach. A gray stone mole jutted seaward and a white-housed, red-roofed town lay at the foot of a towering, blue moun- tain-peak whose summit was shrouded in mist. ‘What land is that captain?” “It might be any land, Mr. Stephen, from the Havanas to Manoa, the Golden City. Just now I’m thinking it’s a bad land-fall for us. And yon- der come the ground-sharks! ”’ He pointed to a long, low galley that seemed to spring from the muella and, driven by its forty oars, crept like a giant insect toward us. Outboard, a long, sharp snout like a ram extended some ten feet over the water, and in- board we could see the benches where the oars were double-banked by the slaves, all chained to the oars, and also to the benches, so that if an accident should happen to the craft the rowers would go down with their ship. A. strong roundhouse amidships was crammed with soldiery and a couple of brass sakers glittered upon the poop. Suddenly she stopped and the slaves poised their oars, resting on the mass- ive looms as the hail came across the twenty yards of water. The language was Spanish and the voice said; ©) VOOKS AAG (E@)