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"Touched!" cried at that moment one of the forecastle-men who was superintending the operation. The captain and lieutenant went on to the forecastle-deck. "What depth are we in?" asked the captain. "Twenty-one thousand seven hundred and sixty-two feet," answered the lieutenant, writing it down in his pocket-book.
At the precise moment when Strand occupied the position named, between the knight-heads, this personage was holding a discourse with three or four of the forecastle-men, who stood on the heel of the bowsprit, inboard the etiquette of the ship not permitting these worthies to show their heads above the nettings.
So long as the jokes were confined to these semi-initiated individuals, the top men enjoyed their fun with impunity; but, the in stant the dignity of a quarter-gunner's person was invaded, the whole gang of petty officers and forecastle-men rose in a body to meet the insult, with a readiness and dexterity that manifested how much at home the elder mariners were with all that belonged to their art.
All the quarter-masters, and several of the forecastle-men, were swarming round the double-wheel on the quarter-deck. Some jumping up and down, with their hands upon the spokes; for the whole helm and galvanised keel were fiercely feverish, with the life imparted to them by the tempest. "Hard up the helm!" shouted Captain Claret, bursting from his cabin like a ghost in his night-dress.
"We are none too soon, sir," said Stowel, the moment he had received the rear-admiral with the customary etiquette of the hour. "It's a cap-full of wind already, and it promises to blow harder before morning. We are catted and fished, sir, and the forecastle-men are passing the shank-painter at this moment."
The forecastle-men, of course, come first, as they stand so in the lists by which they are mustered at night by the mate of the watch; then the foretop men, and so on to the gunners, after-guard, and waisters. Each division is under charge of a lieutenant, who, as well as the midshipmen of his division, appears in full uniform.
A shot cut the main-spring-stay, just above his head; and before I had time to speak, the fellow seized a stopper, and caught one of the ends of the stay, applied the stopper, and was hard at work in bringing the rope into its proper place, and in preparing it again to bear a strain. The boatswain applauded his activity, sending two or three forecastle-men to help him.
Dolphins were sporting and flashing around it, and one white bird was hovering over the top of the pole. Long ago, this thing must have been thrown over-board to save some poor wretch, who must have been drowned; while even the life-buoy itself had drifted away out of sight. The forecastle-men fished it up from the bows, and the seamen thronged round it.
The writer, seeing the confidence which these gentlemen possessed with regard to the situation of things, found himself as much relieved with this conversation as he had previously been with the seeming indifference of the forecastle-men, and the smile of the watch upon deck, though literally lashed to the foremast.
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