The Argosy, March 1907 — page 189: what you’re looking at

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

ne — - WHAT BECAME OF. TOM - At first he thought the wind had changed and that he was over land again, _but he could hear a faint rushing, as of waves breaking, and as there were no other lights visible, he had to conclude that he was still at sea and that this was the light of a vessel of some kind. Very well, then! Here was the ~ chanceto~ “descend—here was the un- mapped island between Cranville and Europe. He sought now for the valve-cord, and as fuller, despite his lack of edu- cation, was no man’s fool, he found it.. Tentatively he pulled it, and before long he felt that he was going down. The light was not under him now, but it did not seem far away, and he could distinguish other lights, could hear the throbbing of an engine above the roar | of waves, and presently he felt that he - was rushing down faster than perhaps would be good for him, and he let go the cord. Leaning as far as he dared over the side of the basket, he yelled like a good one, and a moment later was half smoth- ered when the bag collapsed and he was overwhelmed with silk fabric, the meshes of the net, and the spume of tumbling billows. It was an uncanny moment on the slow-going cattle-ship Vancouver when Fuller’s yell was heard above the tumult of a fairly stiff breeze and the ordinary noise of the engine. The lookout, for- ward leaped to the rail, saw something vague and vast tumbling into the sea a boat’s length, perhaps, to starboard, and he shouted something incoherent to the officer on the bridge. The latter had heard the cry, too, and was as quick to peer into the gloom and wonder what had happened. Sailors on and off duty ran to the starboard rail, and superstition laid a terror on some of them such as could have been stirred by no tempest. But the officer on the bridge had recognized the human element in that fearful cry. He ran back to the bell and signaled the engineer to go full speed astern. Almost at the same instant he ordered the clearing away of a small boat, and for the next minute and a half the superstitious ones on board had no _ time for anything but hard work. the startling cry had come. for an ocean voyage. FULLER. The captain came up from below and took a vociferous hand in hastening mat- ters. The broad humanity of the sea was stirring, and whatever hapless wretch it was out there in the darkness, and however he came by his plight, he would have a chance for life if the men on the Vancouver could give it to him. So, presently a boat left the steamer’s side and strong arms propelled it over the waves in the direction. from which The officer who sat in the stern-sheets shouted at every stroke of the great oars, and at his command the sailors shouted, sometimes in chorus. At last they. heard an answering cry, and shortly afterward Tom Fuller, of Cranville, was hauled, dripping and ex- hausted, into the boat. ‘There was none too much life in him, apparently, when at last they had him on board, but restoratives that the cap- tain knew. how to administer soon brought him to, and he was made com- fortable with dry clothes and all the kindly attention that the seafaring men could give. They marveled much at his story, but there was no incredulity, for there was no other possible hypothesis to account for his dropping from the sky quite twenty miles from the coast. In due course Fuller asked where they were. go- ing, and learned, somewhat to his dis- may, that the Vancouver was bound to Deptford, London. There was nothing for it but to make the slow journey and hope for the best. He had all of seventy-five cents with him—not a copper more—and though he was willing enough to work, the ship was fully manned, and the captain had no excuse for compensating him with more than his board on the way over. “You go to the American consul in London,” said the captain. “ Tell him your story, and he’ll send you home in the steerage of some passenger-ship un- der an arrangement by which you will pay your passage after you get back.” Fuller thought with dismay of his modest account in the savings-bank. He had no liking to take any part of that It was accumu- lating for soberer, more permanent, pur- poses, in which Isabel Fielding, he had 761. comicboo <S7GOom