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There it sat up in the cross-trees, a hairy, sulky bulk of man or beast, black, and the creature looked hard down whilst all hands were staring hard up. "Seized if it isn't a gorilla!" said the mate. "'No. said the captain, letting fall his binocular, 'look for yourself. Yet, it's not a man, either. He burst into a laugh as though for relief.
From the heat, which soon became intense, there was no escape, either on deck or below, aloft in the tops, or still higher on the cross-trees; neither could we find relief down in the hold; for it was all the same, except that in the exposed situations we were scorched or roasted, in the others suffocated.
Mark took another look at the sea, reefs and islands, from the main-topmast cross-trees of the ship, as she lay in her new berth. Of course, the range of his vision was somewhat altered by this change of position, and especially did he see a greater distance to the westward, or towards the lee side of the reefs.
At this juncture, Frank Harness sprang up into the fore cross-trees to con the ship, by Captain Dink's directions; and presently his orders to the steersman could be heard ringing out clear and distinct above the creaking of the cordage and the wash of the sea alongside those on the poop, listening to all they could hear with intense eagerness, and waiting for the moment when they could see for themselves the object of the ship's quest.
Clinging to the cross-trees, with the winter seas smoking over the slanted deck beneath him and the whole wrenched fabric of the ship quaking at every sloshing blow, Black Dennis Nolan pressed the mouth of the flask to the girl's colorless lips.
However, I regained my position upon the cross-trees, levelling my glass, rather inconveniently, on the fore side of the topmast, to clear the topsail, and presently I caught it again. Yes, there it was, sure enough, about three miles dead to leeward; and what was more, I could not only see the flag, but also the buoy, and Bob in it.
My thoughts ran, too, as much upon what I was about to see, so that beyond taking a tight hold, and keeping my spyglass buttoned up in my jacket, I paid little heed to the height I was getting, I reached the head of the topmast, and then began to mount the rattlins of the main-topgallant mast, whose cross-trees seemed to be a tremendous height above my head.
I was the first on board to see Java Head, a bluff promontory stretching out into the sea that marks the entrance to Sunda. This was how it was: we'd got more to the north of the captain's reckoning, and while up in the mizzen cross-trees, in the afternoon of our eighty-fifth day out from land to land, I clearly distinguished the headland far-away in the distance, over our starboard quarter.
"Wot! begin to spin the whole yarn o' the voyage afore I've had time to say `How d'ye do?" exclaimed Buzzby, at the same time grasping his two uproarious sons, who had, the instant he sat down, rushed at his legs like two miniature midshipmen, climbed up them as if they had been two masts, and settled on his knees as if they had been their own favourite cross-trees!
One of the topmen then came up, and perceiving my condition, hailed the deck, and said he believed I was dying, for I could not move, and that he dared not leave me for fear I should fall. O'Brien, who had been on deck all the while, jumped up the rigging, and was soon at the cross-trees where I was.
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