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And as a final wind-up, after having made them writhe sufficiently, he ordered them to go back whence they came, and take a share in rescuing their fellows. "Bud we shall trown," shouted back one speaker from the wildly jumping boat. "Then drown, and be hanged to you," shouted Kettle. "I'm sure I don't care if you do. But I'm not going to have cowards like you dirtying my deck-planks."
So we did that dropped down with the ebb, stepped over the rail, bidding Ulus go his ways with boat and news and trophies. As our shoes clattered on the grimy deck-planks, a close-cropped head bobbed up through the forehatch, bowed, and retired. "That's Celestin," said Cospatric, "my professional crew. He's principally cook; and at times he's a very good cook, as you may learn.
A quick flash of his axe-blade in the sun, a dull crunching thud, and the back-bone was severed at the junction of the tail with the body; a lightning-like stroke of his long keen knife followed, and the severed tail was flung quivering aside as a long thin jet of blood spouted out from the body, broadly staining the snow-white deck-planks.
For many months after leaving Amsterdam we sailed south, touching at some islands to obtain vegetable food and replenish our water-casks. Worn out with hardship, our crew more than once showed signs of mutiny. Sometimes for weeks together we lay becalmed in the tropics, when the air hung like a pall of vapour from the sky, and the pitch boiled and blistered in the seams of the deck-planks.
Owing to the high speed of the two vessels, and the rolling of the torpedo-boat, not much execution was done at first; but, as the distance diminished, shell after shell crashed through the bulwarks of the Lurline, ripping them longitudinally, and tearing up the deck-planks with their jagged fragments.
Then he was dreaming; he was now in fiery earnest, for that reason accessible to facts presented to him; and Rosamund's reluctantly spoken words brought his stubborn uncle before his eyes, inflicting a sense of helplessness of the bitterest kind. They were all silent. Beauchamp stared at the lines of the deck-planks.
Doubtless he had papers of some sort which would show that his vessel had cleared for Havana, or some port on the Gulf of Mexico. Christy did not deem it wise to manifest any interest in the distant sail, and, fixing his gaze upon the deck-planks, he continued to walk back and forth, as he was doing when he discovered the steamer. He had not been able to make out her course.
Yet in that glance I saw it the yawning hole, the upheaved jagged deck-planks, the dark bodies hurled to right and left into the scuppers by three separate lights: by the yellow light of the flames in the rigging, by the steel-grey light of dawn, and by a sudden white-hot flush as the lightning ripped open the belly of heaven and let loose the rain.
I could not look right up and see, but I knew as well as could be that it was Jarette there leaning over the rail; and as I watched, the bag for bag it certainly was came lower and lower till it nearly touched the deck-planks, when it was swung gently to and fro till it would just touch the door.
Then he was dreaming; he was now in fiery earnest, for that reason accessible to facts presented to him; and Rosamund's reluctantly spoken words brought his stubborn uncle before his eyes, inflicting a sense of helplessness of the bitterest kind. They were all silent. Beauchamp stared at the lines of the deck-planks.
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