The Wasp, 1913 · page 192 of 364
The Wasp — 1913 — page 192: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page appears to be text from a serialized adventure story rather than a cartoon or satirical piece. It depicts a dramatic naval battle scene between two vessels—the "Polly" (apparently a brig under attack) and a schooner commanded by "Hellfire Hicks." The passage describes hand-to-hand combat during a boarding action, with vivid descriptions of sword and knife fighting on deck. The narrative emphasizes that despite losing men, Hicks commands experienced defenders, while the attacking "boarders" under someone named Trimmer are fresher but only slightly outnumber their opponents. Without additional context about *The Wasp* magazine's specific issue or the serialized story's title and author, it's unclear what political or social satire (if any) this adventure narrative contains. The page may simply be literary content rather than satirical commentary.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
4 THE WASP 187 flimsy, sinking wreckage; and he jumped through the clinging smoke of the explosion to the Polly's shattered rail. As he leaped from the rail to the deck he drove his slender blade into a blackened breast that confronted him, wrenched it free, and sprang clear of the smoke. Hicks’s big guns had been overturned, his schooner riddled, his rogues cut to pieces when re- pulsed by the heroic brig; but still he had six- teen living men instead of three. It seemed to the boarders that corpses sprang from the scuppers, armed and alive, and that wounded men lay prone and slashed with knives and cutlases. The scat- tered battle eddied up and down and across the slippery, slanted deck. It was fought out in pairs and groups, blade to blade, toe to toe. Owing to the loss of the quartermaster’s boat and its entire company, the boarders did not out- number the defenders by more than two or three; but Trimmer’s men were fresh. To offset the freshness of the invaders, Hellfire Hicks himself was alive and practically unhurt. Comichooks.com