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"Ef you cramp your oar in any kind o' sea you're liable to turn her over. Ain't she a daisy? Mine, too." The little dory was specklessly clean. In her bows lay a tiny anchor, two jugs of water, and some seventy fathoms of thin, brown dory-roding. A tin dinner-horn rested in cleats just under Harvey's right hand, beside an ugly-looking maul, a short gaff, and a shorter wooden stick.
Alongside of them were the seamen's chests, with skilfully carved oak or mahogany cleats, grafted rope horseshoe handles, and turk's head at each side of the cleats. These were painted white to give variety and effect.
Immediately overhead, on the first floor, I cut a hole, about six inches square, and passed up a rope attached to the barrel. This rope I looped at the end, for the reception of a handle. On the floor I nailed two cleats between three and four feet apart, as guards to keep my feet from slipping.
The men sprang to the ropes with a will, but ere they had begun to cast them off from the cleats an ominous sound was heard from aloft, and, splitting from clew to earring, our poor topgallantsail blew clean out of the boltropes with a loud crack as if a gun had been fired off, the fragments floating away ahead of us, borne on the wings of the wind like a huge kite, until it disappeared in the dark chiaraoscura of the distant horizon, where heaven and sea met amid the shadows of night.
That's why he was shadowy and hard to describe. Sometimes he came up to the St. Dunstan roof just as we did; and once, a good while ago, there were cleats on that wall there so he could climb down here without the rope. They have been taken away some time, and the places where they were are weathered over so you would hardly notice them." "Right you are," I said feelingly. "I'd hardly notice them.
Probably he feared to make too plain an opposition, with that dark-hulled, sombre, ugly-looking submarine torpedo boat lying so close at hand. "Now, heave us a line, Eph!" hailed Hal. The line came, and was caught. Hal slipped over the further side with it, vanishing under water long enough to make it fast to one of the submerged cleats of the sloop's rail.
"I thought so!" he declared joyfully when he was done. Rain and snow had swelled the thick boards of which it was built. But through the narrow cracks between these, he saw that the transverse pieces on the inside, like the four without, were only slender battens. "If I can git some of them cleats off," he said, "I can bust in."
There were bad knees and ankles and shoulders galore. He began at the soles of the feet and went up to the crown of the head. "Take off those shoes, Kincaid," he commanded. "The soles are worn so thin that you can't help feeling the cleats through them. Before you know it, your feet'll be so bruised that you'll be wanting a crutch."
"The boys have taken all the boats, and left the vessel," replied Bitts. "Left the vessel!" exclaimed Mr. Fluxion. "Were you asleep on deck?" "No, sir. Half a dozen of them hung me by the neck till I was nearly choked to death," pleaded the carpenter. "Where was Cleats?" "I stepped below for half a minute, and they clapped the slide on over me," answered Cleats, very sheepishly.
For an hour they discussed the events of the cruise of the Josephine up the Mediterranean; but both were satisfied that the discipline of the squadron had been triumphant. Mr. Lowington was more indulgent towards Cleats than the vice-principal was disposed to be, and he was put on probation.
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