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The river, smooth and glassy, glowed in reflection from the ruddy sky, the sails flapped, and, no longer answering to her helm, the vessel was beginning slowly to yield to the sluggish current, when there was a rattling sound as the chain cable ran through the hawse-hole, and directly after the anchor took hold in the muddy bottom, the way on the brig was checked, and she swung in mid-stream with her bowsprit pointing out the direction of her future course a long open waterway between two rapidly-darkening banks of trees whose boughs drooped over and dipped their muddied tips in the stream.
After our topsails had been sheeted home, the head yards braced aback, the fore-topmast staysail hoisted, and the buoys streamed, and all ready forward for slipping, we went aft and manned the slip-rope which came through the stern port with a turn round the timberheads. ``All ready forward? asked the captain. ``Aye, aye, sir; all ready, answered the mate. ``Let go! ``All gone, sir''; and the chain cable grated over the windlass and through the hawse-hole, and the little vessel's head swinging off from the wind under the force of her backed head sails brought the strain upon the slip-rope. ``Let go aft! Instantly all was gone, and we were under way.
The snorting of the steamer, the rattling of the chain through the hawse-hole; and on deck, and under the quarter, strange gleams of red light amid pitchy darkness, from engines, galley fires, lanthorns; and black folk and white folk flitting restlessly across them. The strangest show: 'like a thing in a play, says every one when they see it for the first time.
"A purty slick craft, boys," he said to the party, as the "Gypsy's" anchor ceased rattling out of the hawse-hole, "a purty slick craft, an' must 'a' cost a heap o' money." Then as he pulled his own weather-beaten dory that had been towing astern along to the gangway, Albert stepped up to him and said in a low voice: "Will you excuse me a little while, Mr. Terry?
He remained a prisoner till we arrived in America; but the very moment he heard the chain rattle out of the hawse-hole, and the ship swing to her anchor, he started to his feet, dashed the sentry aside, and gaining the deck, exclaimed, "At home, with my beard!"
Soon after the camp had settled down Harriet was conscious of a renewal of the previous night's activity on board the sloop, and in due time the wireless sparks began sputtering from the aerials at the masthead. They had hardly begun when they abruptly ceased. Her ears caught the sound of the anchor chain scraping through the hawse-hole.
The anchor of the schooner was weighed by its buoy-rope, and the chain, after being rove through the upper or opposite hawse-hole, brought in on board the Swash. Another chain was dropped astern, in such a way, that when the schooner came upright, it would be sure to pass beneath her keel, some six or eight feet from the rudder.
But their efforts were vain. Its impetuosity could not in this way be checked; and as the end of the cable by some strange neglect, had not been clinched around the mast, the last coil followed the example of "its illustrious predecessors," and disappeared through the hawse-hole, after having, by an unexpected whisk, upset the mate, and given the captain a rap across the shins, which lamed him for a week.
"It is a species of endless chain, passing round the base of the capstan amidships, and through a stationary block called a `controller' on the forepart of the lower deck, to which the cable is attached by nippers as it comes through the hawse-hole inboard; and, as the capstan is hove round, the messenger drags the cable up, the nippers being released and taken forward again to get a fresh grip, while the slack of the cable passes down the deck pipes into the cable lockers below, sir."
I shook myself, turned away, and tried to persuade myself that I was dreaming. Perhaps I had been doing so. At least, I remember very little more, till I was roused by the rattling of the chain-cable through the hawse-hole, opposite the pier-head. And now, gentle readers, farewell; and farewell, Clovelly, and all the loving hearts it holds; and farewell, too, the soft still summer weather.
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