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I knew that the barque would move but slowly the stream was narrow and curved in several places, and therefore she could not use her sails. She would drop down by the force of the current, and I could easily keep up with her. The attendants of the king were in no way suspicious of my intentions. They observed that I appeared well pleased with my new situation.
"Stand by for it," said the soldier, coiling it in his hand and then throwing it towards the barque. But the coil fell short of the mark, and another minute's delay occurred.
Nothing, however, could be more natural: the quiet barque that navigated the stormy waters of the Paris Exchange, under the flag of the Cat and Racket, was just now in the toils of one of these tempests which, returning periodically, might be termed equinoctial.
The words came clear to his ear, and just outside he could hear two men pacing backwards and forwards upon the deck. And yet he was helpless, staring down the mouth of the nine-pounder, unable to move an inch or to utter so much as a groan. Again there came the burst of voices from the deck of the barque. So it's up and it's over to Stornoway Bay, Pack it on! Crack it on! Try her with stunsails!
But one spring there was a sensation little short of a scandal when it became known that Mary Cassidy, the handsomest girl of the Island, was keeping company with a Spanish sailor who had come into harbour on a Glasgow barque. The stage of keeping company was not long. So violent was the passion that flamed up between the two that there was no gainsaying it.
My! how she burns." "Yes," assented Smith, as the barque, after smouldering so long, now blazed, as if eager to clear away all traces of the horrible tragedy. "You'll recollect all about that cabin, Gnat, if we do get at the beggars won't you?" "Recollect?" I said, with a shiver; "I shall never be able to forget it."
Many times during life have the storms and waves swept against my trembling barque, but in that little harbor called home no storms ever came. Oh, how much a man loses when a good wife dies! So great was my distress that, had it not been for the strength imparted by a pitying God, I never could have passed through that long night of suffering. Gone, never to return.
The conference between the captain and the second lieutenant was but a short one; and when the latter again appeared on deck he beckoned me to him and instructed me to don my dirk, as I was to accompany him on a visit to the barque. Just as we were about to go down over the side Captain Vernon appeared on deck, and, addressing the second "luff," said.
The barque may roll and pitch, but she cleaves the world, illuminates it through the hundred mouths of her tribunes, ploughs the seas of science, rides with full sail, cries from the height of her tops, with the voice of her scientists and artists: "Onward, advance! Follow me!" She carries a huge crew, which delights in adorning her with fresh streamers.
Such was the man who looked after the anchors of a less than five-hundred-ton barque, my first command, now gone from the face of the earth, but sure of a tenderly remembered existence as long as I live. No anchor could have gone down foul under Mr. B-'s piercing eye.
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