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He had just completed this examination when the injured man showed signs of returning consciousness, at the same moment that the skipper, having heard from the mate the particulars of the accident, came bustling into the deckhouse with a bottle of brandy in one hand and a tumbler in the other, intent upon doing something, though he scarcely knew what, for the relief of the sufferer.
Then as the anchor was let go he thought Jake ought to have come back and went to look for him. He found the lad leaning against the deckhouse, smoking a cigarette. "Where's Kenwardine?" he asked. "I left him in the saloon. He gave me two letters for you and a useful hint about some debts of mine." "Never mind that! How long is it since you left him?" "Quite five minutes," Jake answered coolly.
The little group that bore the mate's body shuffled aft, with the others following like a funeral procession. A man looked shivering out of the door of the starboard forecastle, and inquired in loud whispers. "Was ist los? Sag mal was ist denn los?" He put his inquiry to Conroy, who waved him off and passed to the port forecastle on the other side of the deckhouse.
She was covered all over with gilt carvings, the deckhouse in the stern especially, and looked as if she had started freshly painted out of one of Backhuysen's pictures. Once on board her, a legion of horses towed her along, full trot, and I went to bed.
They two alone in the fog! He whirled round the deckhouse and backed on his heels to get his balance. Directly in front, in a very understandable pose, was the intended victim, his jaw jutting, his eyelids narrowed. Quasimodo tried desperately to reach for his pistol; but a bolt of lightning stopped the action. There is something peculiar about a blow on the nose, a good blow.
Presently one of the huge passenger boats, moored for the winter, loomed up through the fog; and toward this Hawksley directed his steps. He made a flying leap aboard and vanished round the deckhouse to the river side. Quasimodo laughed as he followed. It was as if the tobacco pouch and the appraiser's receipt were in his own pocket; and broad rivers made capital graveyards.
The erection of that primitive deckhouse was a matter of propriety rather than of necessity. It was proper that the white men should have a place to themselves on board, but Lingard was perfectly accurate when he told Mrs. Travers that he had never slept there once. His practice was to sleep on deck. As to Jorgenson, if he did sleep at all he slept very little.
Aft, the two officers sat in their deckhouse, willing enough to watch, but inevitably rendered dull of sight and sense by the mystery of the night and the quiet peace of the river. Once, twice, and again the hawsers twanged, and now they twanged at will, for with such a stream running it was excusable for even such a worthy officer as Jerry Rolfe to put something down to natural causes.
Five minutes passed, and then a dozen dark figures made a sudden rush towards the deckhouse in which Carr lay in irons. Then came the sound of smashing blows as the door was burst open with an axe, and in a few seconds Carr was brought out upon the main deck and quickly freed from his irons by Malua, to whom a duplicate key had been given by the second mate.
Port, starboard, and masthead lights; teak gratings; sliding sashes of the deckhouse; the captain's chest of drawers, with charts and chart-table; photographs, brackets, and looking-glasses; cabin doors; rubber cuddy mats; hatch-irons; half the funnel-stays; cork fenders; carpenter's grindstone and tool-chest; holystones, swabs, squeegees; all cabin and pantry lamps; galley-fittings en bloc; flags and flag-locker; clocks, chronometers; the forward compass and the ship's bell and belfry, were among the missing.
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