Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 3, 1924 — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

THE ROARING FORTIES. slumber on the cabin sky light. At length, with the gale increasing, and with the glass still falling, he exclaimed to his first officer: “T’m going down to my cabin now for a sleep. Call me if the weather moderates.” CHAPTER XX. THE FASTEST IN THE WORLD. SNORTING Western ocean gale had A set in earnest. The Valkyrie, on her best point of sailing, with the wind two points abaft the beam, was reeling off close to sixteen knots an hour. “Hard to beat that, sir,” observed Pugsley, to the captain with satisfaction. ‘“Umph, judging by the way the bar- ometer’s pumping, this blow hasn’t really started yet. Wait till we get to the top of the gale, and I'll bet you a beaver hat she'll be doing twenty knots on a bowline.” With the coming of dawn, Valkyrie ap- peared more like a half-tide rock than a merchant vessel. Putting her lee scuppers into a seething mass of foam, she fairly boiled along, her cat-head buried beneath a mountain of gray, green water. Harder than ever blew the wind, and the seas came rolling along in vast, sloping hills, as high as the topsail yards. The wind sounded with a high unending roar. Standing in the lee of the wheel box, looking astern, the mate observed that the gulls, the strongest birds that fly, were un- able to make headway, but kept close down in the trough of the swells. ‘It’s some day,” he muttered to himself, “ when the gulls can’t fly to windward, and yet by God here we are still hanging on to our main skysail!” Pugsley shook his head dubiously. “We'll all be in the belly of hell if he keeps crack- ing on this way.” At the change of the watches, Dunbar took his men from one end of the clipper to the other, and made them put a watch- tackle on all the braces and sheets, and haul them taut as fiddle strings. Once, when they were “‘ sweating up ”’ the lee fore brace, all hands came near being washed overboard. They were bending their backs on the brace, when the Valkyrie, 5 A 865 went over on her beam ends, and a solid green sea broke across her rail. It took all hands clean off their feet and those near the rail, with only a little slack on the brace, were held down so that the sea broke fully two feet over their heads. By watching their chance they hauled the brace tight, and were heartily glad when they heard the last order, “ Belay.” It was getting so furious that it was dangerous to go out on the lee side at all, for the wind hove the Valkyrie over every time she rose to the summit of a sea. The captain’s eye was ever on the main royal yard, gauging its resistance to the utmost, and always venturing to that ut- most. After breakfast, Forbes treated all hands to a hair-raising exhibition on his own ac- count. According to custom, he went out on the swinging boom, when the lower stun- sail was set, and calmly surveyed his ship from the boom end! The proceeding was startling indeed. If the man at the wheel brought the clipper a point or two nearer to the wind, Forbes would have been flung to the sea. But without a tremor, the exultant skipper hung on to his perilous perch, viewing his ship as calmly as though he sat in a cabin arm-chair. A few minutes later, without mishap, he swung himself back again upon the deck. Such devil-may-care actions were second nature to Bully Forbes. On his cabin bulk- head was emblazoned his motto: “ The bold man seldom gets hurt.”’ He himself was the living embodiment of that motto. By midday, the gale from the northwest had grown to a hurricane, so terrifying that even the redoubtable skipper had been forced to shorten canvas. In the height of the blow, the Valkyrie was scudding under topsails and foresail only, at the rate of eighteen knots an hour. With heavy hail squalls and high seas running, it had be- come a grim battle for the crew, but Forbes drove them to their last breath. Just as the mate began to thank God thgt the blow was abating, the captain sang out: ‘“‘ Shake out your to’gallantsails, mister.” # The astounded mate could not refrain from an exclamation of dismay. EO DOO (©