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Commands were shouted; the engine-room telegraph wrangled madly. The momentum of the Assyrian was checked startlingly; her bows sheered smartly off to port. A rumour of frightened voices and pounding feet came from the leeward boat-deck, where the main body of the passengers was congregated, hidden from Lanyard by the shoulder of the foreward deck-house.
Weston's vigilant eye and whisk Bobby off to a certain favored nook on the boat-deck just outside the captain's state-room. Here they had spent many happy evenings, notwithstanding the fact that their figures, silhouetted against the light, had never failed to provoke the captain to a profanity that was not always inaudible.
All this we could see by peering over the edge of the boat-deck, which was now quite open to the sea, the four boats which formed a natural barrier being lowered from the deck and leaving it exposed. About this time, while walking the deck, I saw two ladies come over from the port side and walk towards the rail separating the second-class from the first-class deck.
Every horror in the world has its fitting ritual. For the fifth time and four times in just such weather I heard the screw stop; saw our wake curve like a whiplash as the great township wrenched herself round; the lifeboat's crew hurry to the boat-deck; the bare-headed officer race up the shrouds and look for any sign of the poor head that had valued itself so lightly.
And it was as high now as was good for this old-fashioned side-wheeler with her old-time single engine. Jan shook his head and, still shaking his head, once more made the rounds of the boat-deck. Eight boats; and each boat might hold twenty-five people that is, if it was in a mill-pond. But a night like this how many even if the running gear were sound?
The center of gravity of the male body is high, and the tendency is to overtopple. But the little beggars employed a method which she declared was new to her and which she desired to learn. Leaping from the davits of the boat-deck above, they plunged downward, their faces and shoulders bowed forward, looking at the water.
Sometimes the bales and bags slid about the place with the rolling of the ship, occasionally he made weak though desperate attempts to help Joe and Jock who struggled on nobly; but eventually Mac managed to drag himself and two blankets to the top of the horse-boxes high on the boat-deck.
"No use to hunt up the purser, now," I thought; and I made a dash for the boat-deck, to see if I could render any assistance there.
The for'ard end of the boat-deck terminated in the bridge, which, instead of being raised above it, was part of it. Trotting around the wheel-house to the shady lee-side of it, he came upon his fate; for be it known that Captain Duncan possessed on board in addition to two fox-terriers, a big Persian cat, and that cat possessed a litter of kittens.
"We sing up on the boat-deck every night, and now the moon is up, it's perfectly gorgeous." But Percival's abhorrence of crowds made him hold out resolutely until the day before they were to land in Japan. Everybody was making plans for the few days to be spent in port, and small parties were being formed to leave the steamer at Yokohama and join it three days later at Kobe.
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