Evening star. [volume], October 27, 1912, Page 5, Image 31

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
I " :lr , M ?gjjS
[ iv Jm Jm^ fj^jgaEBMiMi
K - Hf
fir I?' ifl^l'
M^m^m j
r MWf^W%J^m
~*^".? ^ jTmHBIH
pp?>
ppP" J&'^M
A Dim, Shadowy Oblong Showed Beneath.
WHAT I say, we ain't called on to blacklist a
man for showin' the white feather, not so long
as he does his duty. Leastways, not when his
job's up in the air, an' his wife's sick, and him not used to
the ways of the beach. Of course, if that flvin' machine
skipper o' yours falls down on his job, Wei.shy, that's
dangerous to folks that trusts him. I )uty's duty; a man's
life don't count against folks, nor his feelings neither."
It was the law of the beach reduced to its bare bones.
Ford flinched as the booming voice reached him from
the runway of the lifeboat house. It was Casco, big
Jem Casco, keeper of Ships Bottom Life Saving Station,
and the coastguard Captain was discussing him
with little Welsh, the breeches buoy gunner.
When the Xavv Department assigned Ford the week
before to Ships Bottom, the Inspector of the Barnegat
Bay District detailed Welsh as "sky pilot" to assist the
Government aviator because of the gunner's intimate
knowledge of the treacherous Barnegat shore, the worst
ship-killing stretch on the whole Jersey coast from
Sandy Hook to the Delaware capes. Ford's experimental
appointment had come on the heels of a storm
cycle that accounted for no less than ninety sail along
ninety miles of coast,- a sail a mile!?a wholesale disaster
which taxed the derelict destroyers of the navy,
enriched the beachcombers, and brought fear to the
hearts of coastwise skippers. In the face of the havoc
the Washington authorities inaugurated the daring innovation.?ar.
aeronlane service for charting down dere
? I o
liets, that drifting menace to coastwise craft, which
could be more readily and quickly discerned from a
moderate a' itude than from sea level; a fact that the
Ships Bottom life savers admitted as sailormen who had
plumbed sea depth from a ship's masthead, though they
resented the "flyin' machine service" as the coastguards
resent all innovations, on general principles.
npin: alarm of the telephone bell in the intervening
station put a period to the colloquy on the runway.
Evidently there was trouble on foot; but Ford turned
away, unseen and unheeding.
n THE LAX
iur inn
Drawings by George Wright
"So Welsh has me sized up? lie
knows why I cut the flights short," he
said drearily as he crossed the sand
dunes to the squat shed overlooking
tin* station, where the aeroplane was
housed.
He was not surprised that they had
found out, and he knew that the final
break was bound to come soon. And
then?the debacle! Ford realized the
impossibility of explaining psycho1
1 f. . 4... * . ~C it.
IOgU.lI Kills lO II1CSC glim 1111 11 OI nil'
beach, who took no count of self interest
or the first law of nature. The
thought of what it meant for his young
wife, sick in the little village across the
bay, if he lost his scanty Government
^H^Ki pay, was additional torture to the
tortured nerves that had gone to pieces
after that terrible mile-high tumble
from the clouds at 'Frisco.
w^' jrvj "You're only shook up a bit: you'll
come back, old chap." That's what
the other bird men, who envied his daring,
had said: but Ford knew better.
That miraculous escape had left him
with an abiding horror of high places,
a fear of flying. < >nlv the girl's immediate
necessity had forced him into
temj>orary employment with the
For relief Ford turned mechanically
to the aeroplane, preparing it for the
daily search of the sea. As he busied
himself with the familiar bolts and
screws, an envelop dropped on the
>1 ground. It was a letter he had received
1 that morning in Barnegat village and
thrust unread into his pocket. He
opened it and glanced at the heading:
J^3HH THE DEEP SEA WRECKING
^ COMPANY,
William C. Handy, Pres.
Hilly Handy! He hadn't heard from
Billy in years: not since the days of
his hard luck, anyway. The note was
suggestively abrupt.
Dear Jim.?No doubt you know the
latest Philippines disaster. The company
is prepared to whack up for first publication
and exploitation of specific Eastern
material that may reach you by sea. To
prevent official piracy we should be advised
at once on receipt of news, that we
may have our correspondent on the
ground. Let me know how this strikes
?????you.
Yours for wealth, health, and happiness,
Billy.
So Billy was president of a wrecking company now.
Well, he was always a good hand at business,?a little
unscrupulous perhaps; but? A sudden suspicion
brought a flush to Ford's haggard face. Why had
Handy troubled to hunt him up now, just when he had
taken a Government job hunting down derelicts?
"Billy's driving at some crooked work. What's the
latest Philippines disaster, and what's Handy's company
got to do with it?"
Baffled by the cryptic letter, he gave it up at last, and
stood staring moodily seaward. There the elements
were in concert with his thoughts. The wind, boring inshore,
piled up long lines of spume and spindrift on the
half submerged Gridiron reefs, which stretched out fanwise
a rifleshot away, like giant fingers, hungry to claw
down coastwise craft. Farther to the south a single gray
gull balanced inquiringly over the splintered spar of the
Carbonate, an ancient sea wagon disintegrating in the
maw of the Barnegat quicksands. A ghostly skeleton
draped that spar, the upflung planes of a smuggling
aeroplane that, through some miscalculation of the
driver, had swooped down to destruction in the dark.
Grimly suggestive, the fluttering rags chilled Ford's
heart. Was it a premonition of his own ultimate fate?
He knew there was menace for his frail air craft?a
short-winged scouting machine?in the gray gulls and
other marauding sea fowl that swarmed in flocks each
day at her launching, and followed the droning wreck
/ it- chvuuvwI in ii'itli ri?cr;ir<litof nnKp.
num. i, <?i .j u vi in itvt |'v*v>4 ?-ww - ?
quences in case of collision at sea. His own wrecked
nerves saw death lurking everywhere.
"Maybe that would be the best way out," he said bitterly.
The whole beach would soon be on to hint,
through Welsh. "A coward, a quitter, afraid of his
precious neck!" That's what he was! A derelict hounding
down derelicts!
A DEEP throated roar capped his moody reflections,
as Little Welsh, the gunner, came plodding into
the hangar, his weatherbeaten face eager with the news
he brought.
V
BEACH
By S. TEN EYCK BOURKE and
CHARLES FRANCIS BOURKE
"(irders from Headquarters," he said. "Ships Bottom's
just word by wire to watch out for the Manila.
Transport, she is, bound with bullion for the Philip
peans. Keporteu seen swampeu, stacks down arter tne
big blow, (lee! She'd be a find!"
"I don't see what good she'd do us: we're Government
employees," Ford said, his face paling with sudden
premonition as he stared at the peajaeketed little man
in sou'wester and sea boots?Welsh's idea of proper
"sky pilot" costume. "We couldn't claim salvage?"
"1 wasn't meaning that?hang the loot!" Welsh broke
in. "It's on'y she ain't ashore an' she ain't sunk; her
bulkheads 'ud hold her up. She's a floatin' menace,
der'lie*, an' drifting in the lane o' commerce an' coastwise
skipping," he said, quoting from the Service Rules.
"Two double-barreled funnels with red rims she is,
layin' f<>r murder. We got to git her, if we bust that sky
ship an' go squash doin' it!"
There it was again, the law of the beach that ruled the
unlettered little gunner as it ruled his mates! Hut for
that sublimated self sacrifice, the Barnegat coastguard
(proverbially poor like all life savers) might be as rich
as the best?or worst?of the beachcombers: they had
the same opportunities. And they risked death willingly
for pitiful pay, and without hope of pension. The
Government was unfair,?unjust and grasping.
As the thought shaped itself, Ford had a dawning
sense of what Billy Handy meant by his mysterious letter.
"The Manila with bullion for the Philippines."
Somehow Handy had found out the nature of his present
employment. Knowing he was down and out, and
realizing the tremendous advantage the derelicthunting
aeroplane gave him over sea-level searchers.
Handy had brutally offered to bribe him, when he
learned of this richest of the many pickings along the
bleak Barnegat beach?to "whack up" for advance information
of the transport's whereabouts, before the
Government should locate the wreck. There would be
big money in itDazed,
as a man in a trance, Ford mounted the ready
machine, with Welsh beside him. As the aeroplane sped
out over the slatv ocean, the roar of the surf on the
Gridiron welled up like giant minute guns flailing the
reefs. He shuddered, raging to think that he too, like
the simple-minded surfmen, was daily risking death for
a pittance?worse than death! And there was Aline!
A mere fraction of the Manila's wealth would solve the
problem, give him the chance of escape from his precarious
calling, put him on his feet, a man, and make the
girl a well woman. He had only to accept Handy's
offer. It meant riches, safety?if he found the missing
ship. Already he was weighing the chances.
T X EVER see so many gulls as the' is today," Welsh
* jerked out suddenly, backing a brave front. "Must
be a big blow comin': they know."
The aviator glanced curiously at the little gunner.
b fir' ?i, . <<eoi1 t/i tbn l4bir*b fli'in ' biuitiiiee" ?in? I
M 1IUL UX U IU L1 IV_ lU^U U > III I7UOH1VOO Jk V t, U11U
was having his own trouble hanging with a death grip to
the wire spreaders. It would not be difficult to divert
his attention at the crucial moment if they should sight
the Manila's two murder stacks he spoke of!
Ford chuckled?an ugly sound. A pair of yellow funnels,
sticking up from the water?that was what Welsh,
a boatman, accustomed to sea-level sighting, hoped to
see. Ford, an aviator, knew that from the altitude of
the aeroplane those two yellow funnels would appear
only as black specks on the sullen surface. He had
nothing to fear from Welsh's forestalling him with the
swamped Manila. And the imminent storm would keep
off other searchers; more particularly the U. S. S.
Katahdin, the big navy ram, which was down shore
somewhere hunting derelicts just as the aeroplane was
doing.
"This gale'll scare off the Katy: she's a poor sea
boat," Welsh said, as though divining his thought.
"Likely it'll hang some hookers on the Gridiron, eomin'
from the east'ard," he added grimly.
"It will drive in drifters too?*' Ford said in sudden
panic. "There'd be no chance of finding 'em again?say
twelve hours after?" It would take about that for
Billy Handy's wrecking tug to come from New York.
"Mostly them kind hang round for days; if coastway
<-M-.it*t il.in't tin.I 'inn'" \\*<*1i;h cui'd irnmlv "( )n*V ltin
Villi I wv/u l HUM V 111. ? V-? .71. ..??. ^ . -- . ^
wash 'ml pile the Manila on the Gridiron, a swamped
ship like her, on'y her two funnels showin'?if it was
her the Morgan paeket thinks she saw."
Ford's eyes glinted evilly, scanning the sea ahead,?a
sea that seemed laboring to spawn forth some horror
buried in its bosom. What was that? Something flickered
far down below. Fish gulls, a shimmering porpoise?
The twin spots were too steady for that, too
evenly aligned. He looked closely, gripping the controller
of the speeding aeroplane with whitened knuckles.
A dim shape showed beneath the two spots, a
shadowy oblong, growing plainer as the machine droned
seaward. What was it Welsh said? uHer airtight bulkhead
'ud keep Iter afloat under sea level."
"Bv lim! There she is now?seaward!"
*** "? i ? i - *t *.^1 i i u
W CISI1 S StlUUCIl cry uiroiucu IIIC uiuiwpii m