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"Lord bless you, Mr Lascelles," was the reply, "the canvas ain't wove that'd stand a single minute before such a howlin' gale as this here; it'd be blown clean out of the gaskets if we was to cast a single one of 'em loose; indeed, I shouldn't be a bit surprised to find half the sails blown away from the spars as it is, when we get light enough to see how the little barkie has come out of the scrimmage.
To my mind it needs no prophet to tell us with that afore our eyes that we're booked for a reg'lar thorough-bred Cape Horn gale of wind; and my advice as chief- mate of this here barkie is, that we makes her just as snug as we knows how, for, depend upon it, afore morning we shall have as thorough a trial of her seagoin' qualities as we're likely to want for many a day to come."
We continued to bowl away to the southward; and as we kept our canvas a good rap full, the little barkie tripped along a good honest nine knots every hour. The weather was as fine as we could possibly wish, with every appearance of being thoroughly settled; and there seemed to be a good promise of our making an exceptionally rapid passage.
And when the weather's too bad to sail the barkie, we can heave her to, and when it's too bad for that we can anchor her, my boy, go below, slide on the top of the companion, and turn in until the weather clears." "But," said I, "we cannot anchor in the middle of the Atlantic. Suppose we should be caught in a cyclone there, for instance?"
Why, if it had really been so, the stranger must have been close aboard of us; it would be impossible to see an ordinary light at a much greater distance than a hundred fathoms in such a fog as this; why, it is thick enough to cut with a knife, the old barkie can scarcely force her way through it."
We soon worked through the short passage in the reef, and then stood away to the westward, rounding the southern extremity of the island very shortly afterwards. The moment that we cleared this point, and opened the western side of the island, Bob shouted, "Ah! there lies the dear old barkie, sure enough. Look at her, Harry, lad.
"That is what I call tearing the marrow out of a body's bones," said Bill Bullock. "Well, bless the old barkie; there's few could stand it as she does. I never seed any one carry on so as our skipper does, this blessed day no, neither now, nor since the time I first went afloat." "Nor I neither, old ship," answered Jem.
On going into the hold, which was pretty well free of cargo, on examination I discovered that the holes had been bored through the timbers, instead of through the planks. `Either a friend or a lubber has done this, exclaimed my mate. `I think the former, I observed. `Get some plugs as fast as you can, my lads, and we'll soon stop these leaks, and yet keep the old barkie afloat. The holes were bored mostly high up, so that they were easily got at, and we thus had the greater number of them quickly plugged.
The moment he came on board we cast off our moorings, ran up the jib and foresail, and slid rapidly away from the shore. The wind was moderately fresh from the northward, so we started under mainsail, foresail, and jib, but with the topmast lowered, as, being in very light trim, I did not think it advisable to run any risks by crowding sail upon the barkie.
I was ready to square myself for Lafayette." A lot of good football stories have been going the rounds, some old, some new, but none of them better than the one Barkie Donald, afterward a member of the Harvard Advisory Football Committee, tells on himself, in a game that Harvard played against the Carlisle Indians in 1896.
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