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They were exhausted when they stopped beside a belt of sparkling water, and Jim cried out hoarsely and clenched his fist. The channel was wider than he had thought, and near the other bank a punt was running down with the tide. One could hardly see her low, gray hull, but the tanned lugsail cut sharply against the bank, and its slant and the splash of foam at the bows indicated speed.
'Like a ship, my dear sir, exactly like a ship. Sometimes the hull is out of order, and we consult the surgeon; sometimes the rigging, and then I advise; sometimes the engines, and we go to the brain-specialist; sometimes the look-out on the bridge is tired, and then we see an oculist. I should recommend you to see an oculist. A little patching and repairing from time to time is all we want.
"There might be pieces of wood on the rocks, but nothing on the sands," replied the sailor. "Why?" "Because the sands are still more dangerous than the rocks, for they swallow up everything that is thrown on them. In a few days the hull of a ship of several hundred tons would disappear entirely in there!"
Then the vessel that was hit amidships rolls a little, and there is a gurgle like that of an enormous, weir: a mast goes with a sharp report; a man's figure appears on the taffrail and bounds far into the sea it is an experienced hand who wants to escape the down-draught; the hull shudders, grows steady, and then with one lurch the ship swashes down and the bellowing vortex throws up huge spirts of boiling spray.
We were not long in coming up with the chase, nor in making out by the cut of her canvas, her short yards, and heavy-looking hull, that she was no slaver. As soon as we fired a gun, and hoisted our ensign and pennant, she hove-to, and on sending a boat on board we found that she was the Mary Jane, of Bristol, a steady-going old African trader.
In another instant it seemed that some unimaginable force would shatter her out of existence ... and then the figure in the doorway it was Hull, she saw, Hull turned deliberately and, still slightly swaying, moved back and off, as if absorbed into that incomprehensible light that had given him dimension. Blood rushed back into her limbs, blood and life together.
We say a remnant, for it was but the hull of a vessel, dismasted, water-logged, its upper works only floating occasionally above the waves, when a transient repose from their still violent undulation permitted it to reassume its buoyancy.
The groups are of real importance to navigators making for the Strait of Magellan, as well as to those who come to fish in the vicinity of the polar regions. When the work on the hull was done, West occupied himself with the masts and the rigging, with the assistance of Martin Holt, our sailing master, who was very clever at this kind of industry.
He was filled with a new lightness of spirit as he felt the throb of "full speed ahead" shake the steel hull about which he so contentedly climbed and crawled. He found something fortifying in the thought that this vast hull was swinging out to her appointed sea lanes, that she was now intent on a way from which no caprice could turn her.
New York and Baltimore, in a large way; Salem, Hull, Portsmouth, New London, New Bedford, New Haven, and a host of smaller seaports, in a lesser degree, joined in this prosperous industry. It was the great interest of the United States, and so continued, though with interruptions, for more than half a century, influencing the thought, the legislation, and the literature of our people.
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