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Scores of half crazy negroes swarmed into the gangway, bearing back the whites by sheer weight of numbers, notwithstanding the weapons of the crew. Revolver and cutlass played an active part, but the slaves seemed absolutely indifferent to life. When one was shot down, half a dozen took his place. Even the few women fought like tigresses. The truth was they were crazed for want of water.
The cask of water was carefully hoisted aboard the boat, as also the smaller cask containing the precious "Canary." The dried fish packed inside the chest, the oars, and other implements were next carried over the "gangway" between the two crafts, each article being stowed in a proper place within the gig.
Again the topsails were hoisted and top-gallant sheets home It was a strong breeze, although the water was smooth, and the Aurora dashed through at the rate of eight miles an hour, with her weather leeches lifting. "Didn't I tell you so?" said Martin to his messmates on the gangway "but there's more yet, my boys."
"It is certainly kind of them to send us a boat," said Parrington. "I wonder what they want, anyhow." He gave orders to stop the boat and to clear the gangway, and then, watching the German cutter with interest, awaited its arrival.
Shan't get her paint clean under a week!" the first mate grumbled to his companion, the second mate a dark-haired, dreamy-eyed, West-country lad, but just out of his teens. The two officers, in dripping oilskins, stood at the gangway checking the tally of coal-baskets as they came on board.
Suddenly from the wharf sounded the approaching footsteps of a running man. He crossed the gangway and raced up the ladder to the captain's cabin. The others sprang to their feet as the door opened and Benson appeared. "He hasn't come!" he cried excitedly. "I watched at the station and he didn't get out!" Consternation showed on every face, and Beamish swore bitterly.
On the eve of a new departure, once more Premier, idol of the populace, and captain of a majority in the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone's thoughts may peradventure turn to those weary days twenty years dead. He would not forget one Wednesday afternoon when the University Education Bill was in Committee, and Mr. Charles Miall was speaking from the middle of the third bench below the gangway.
But, the first blast expended, he sprang to the gangway, and leaped into the cauldron of the lake unhesitatingly, and yet in the possession of all his faculties. He was desperately bent on saving a life so dear to Adelheid, or on dying in the attempt. Maso had watched the crisis with a seaman's eye, a seaman's resources, and a seaman's coolness.
They went together down the gangway stairs, he dressed in an ordinary suit of grey, English tweed, with a golf cap on the back of his head, and she in the last and daintiest of the costumes which the art of Paris and London and New York had produced before the Astronef soared up from far-off Washington.
I obeyed, in a sleepy stupid way in fact, if I had been told to jump overboard I think I should have done so then and as I grasped the combings Bob Hampton seized the leg I lifted as if I had been going to mount a horse, and jerked me right up to where I was seized by a couple of men, thrown down, and then dragged along the deck to the open gangway, where, as I awoke to the fact that there was the black sea all gleaming with yellow scintillations, I suddenly made a desperate effort to escape.
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