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Once clear of the land, we soon ran into an atmosphere of haze and a rising sea which set the long line of ships rolling ponderously; and as the vessels rolled and plunged, flinging heavy showers of spray over their weather bows, each captain stood in his chart-room, with a chart of the strait spread open on the table before him, anxiously awaiting the next news of the enemy.
"Take a look and see that the boy ain't busy up there at a nap," said Riggs, and I mounted to the bridge, keeping well covered and to the seaward side of the chart-house. Rajah was wide awake, lying just inside the coaming of the chart-room door, chewing contentedly at his betel, and holding the spy-glass over the brass doorplate directed toward the island.
Anybody would think that because a man works with his hands and takes wages, he's free to do as he pleases. I remember the Old Man once when I had trouble with a fireman. 'All I want is justice! says the man, putting his dirty hand on the chart-room door. 'Justice! roars the Old Man.
"I stepped along the gangway to the bridge, just as the Second Mate took the telescope from his eye and laid it in the rack. He saw me and leaned over the rail beckoning. "'Say, Mister Chief, what the blazes was that? he whispered. "'Didn't you see it? I asked. I knew he had been dozing on the lee side of the chart-room. "'See it! I heard something! he says.
"Perhaps a minute, possibly two." "Go on." "Just after, the ship's bell struck six three o'clock. The main cabin was dark. There was a light in the chart-room, from the binnacle light. I felt my way to Mr. Vail's room. I heard him breathing. His door was open. I struck a match and looked at him. He had stopped breathing." "What was the state of his bunk?" "Disordered horrible.
Again dreadfully close, so that a shell struck the chart-room full, and crushed it into splinters not bigger than your finger, then dying away to leave the stillness of the mist behind it. An awful chase, enduring many minutes; a chase when I went hot and cold, now filled with hope, then seeming to stand on the very brink of death. But at last the firing ceased.
And towards the end of that week Shard went to his chart-room and laid a new course for his ship a little to the East and towards cultivation. And one day towards evening they sighted a village, and twilight came and the wind dropped altogether. Then the murmurs of the merry men grew to oaths and nearly to mutiny. "Where were they now?" they asked, and were they being treated like poor honest men?
As our signalman ran up the answering pennant, I entered the chart-room and, approaching the table, upon which a chart of the Yellow Sea lay spread out, requested Mr Shiraishi, the navigating lieutenant, to lay down a South-West by South course upon the chart, that we might see where it would take us.
I'll turn the Elsinore's after-quarters upside down, though I know there are none in father's room or mine. And though this is my first voyage with Mr. They always have them for'ard. "And now, Mr. Pathurst, I am going down to attend to your case. You'd better get your Wada to make up a camping kit for you. The next couple of nights you'll spend in the cabin or chart-room.
Feeling my way around the table and bumping most of the poisoned breath out of me against the rotund-bellied stove, I emerged in the cross-hall and made my way to starboard. Here, at the base of the chart-room stairway, I gained the hall that led aft. By this time my own situation seemed so serious that, careless of any collision, I went aft in long leaps. Margaret's door was open.
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