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While the wee cockle-shell was rolling and bungling under our quarter, he would jump on the rail, measure his distance perfectly, spring on to the boat's gunwale and fend her off before she made the return roll. A marvellous performance that was, and the marvel only increased when you saw the young fellow pitching heavy boxes of fish on to the deck of the great steam cutter.
On the 22nd December, in a tiny cutter called the MERMAID, he left Sydney for the first of his survey trips. It was the year 1817, and his mission was:
What d'ye say, men?" turning to his officers; "let's outsail her, or be shot to chips. We can beat her at sailing, I know." With that, nothing doubting that his counsel would be heartily responded to, he ran to the braces to get the cutter before the wind, followed by one officer, while the other, for a useless bravado, hoisted the colors at the stern.
Bill called sonorously to his twelve horses, and as they bent and strained and began to bob their heads, the clattering roar filled the air. Also a cloud of dust and thin, flying streams of chaff enveloped Lenore. The high stalks of barley, in wide sheets, fell before the cutter upon an apron, to be carried by feeders into the body of the machine.
All was safe, the watch was all asleep forward, and Vanslyperken, leaving the cutter to steer itself, hastened aft, cast off the gripe, the boat, as he calculated, immediately turning over, and the sleeping Smallbones fell into the sea. Vanslyperken hastened back to the helm, and put the cutter's head right.
He left a son and a daughter, both worthy of the name they were called upon to bear; the son, a cutter as unerring and exact as the square rule; the daughter, apt at embroidery, and at designing ornaments.
The men aft, under the command of Lord Reginald, had been keeping up a warm fire of musketry, when the lieutenant, turning his head, saw a party of the enemy kept in reserve, about to board the cutter aft. He instantly sprang towards the threatened point, followed by several who had gallantly been keeping the first party of boarders in check.
At first in random coasting sloop, and afterwards in the cutter belonging to the service, the engineer must ply and run amongst these multiplied dangers, and sometimes late into the stormy autumn. For pages together my grandfather's diary preserves a record of these rude experiences; of hard winds and rough seas; and of "the try-sail and storm-jib, those old friends which I never like to see."
"It was hardly dark." "How many men jumped you?" "Just one. But . . ." "Just one, eh?" He pondered the information. "That isn't the usual brand of Galloway work, is it? Get a good slant at him?" "At his clothes," growled Kemble, slamming himself down dejectedly in his chair. "His face was hid, of course." "Ever see a Mexican named del Rio?" Like Cutter before him, Kemble started.
"Here's another cutter coming from the 'Waverly, and I think I make out Lieutenant Commander Kimball in the stern-sheets." It was, indeed, the lieutenant commander. As he stepped ashore, his face coming into the circle of light cast by the lantern, his features were seen to be white with anxiety. "We have just looked into the cylinder," he announced, in a low voice.
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