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I'll take you, but not for your fifty dollars. You pay the regulation price, and that's all." A gust of the gale caught the light shell and swept it broadside for a score of feet. The spray drove inboard in a continuous stinging shower, and Frona at once fell to work with the bailing-can. "I hope we're blown ashore," he shouted, stooping forward to the oars. "It would be embarrassing for you."

They were almost overborne, when, rallying themselves into a squad as one man, with a huzza, they sprang inboard, where, entangled, they involuntarily separated again. For a few breaths' space, there was a vague, muffled, inner sound, as of submerged sword-fish rushing hither and thither through shoals of black-fish.

The officer who had made himself the friend of Russ and Rose was prepared for the bird's coming inboard. He ran with a piece of strong netting in his hands, and as the bird came thumping down on the deck, the man cast this net about the creature. Then what a flapping and croaking and struggling there was!

So, ere Masters or any of the other men could stir a hand, having made up my mind what to do, I had seized hold of part of the slack of the line that remained inboard and, plunging into the sea, swam towards the boat.

Hogged at bow and stern, her deck sloped at the ends like a truck's platform, while a slight twist in the old hull canted the foremast to port and the mizzen to starboard. It would be hard to know when she was on an even keel. The uneven planking, inboard and out, was scarred like a chopping-block, possibly from a former and intimate acquaintance with the coal trade.

As Rick watched, a piece of bait came up with a crab clinging to it. The net swooped and the crab was caught, pulled inboard, and dumped into a bushel basket with one fluid motion. The crabber never took his eyes from the cord. The boat continued in a straight line. Scotty came out on deck and joined Rick.

With such impetuosity did he make his rush, that his snout rose a good two feet fairly above our gunwale; and had not the impetus with which I jerked Bob out of the water been sufficient to fetch him clear inboard, the shark would have had him after all. As it was, we got a glance into his open jaws, and at his six rows of teeth, the remembrance of which makes me shudder to this day.

"Come alive, boys!" said Captain Latham, taking instant command of the deck. "Cast off those lines! Get that tug hawser inboard, Horry. Mr. Chapin, will you see that those lines are coiled down properly? Keep the deck shipshape. Make less work for your watch when we get under canvas. "Lay aft here with your men now, Horry. Tail on to those mainsheets. All together!

Ruby seized the oar, and, notwithstanding the breach of the seas and the narrowness of the passage, steered the boat close to the rock at the proper moment. "Starboard, noo, stiddy!" shouted John Watt, who leant suddenly over the bow of the boat and seized poor Strachan by the hair. In another moment he was pulled inboard with the aid of Selkirk's stout arms, and the boat was backed out of danger.

When, during the course of the gale, a toppling billow overbalanced itself and fell inboard with a crash that nearly split the deck open, sweeping two of the quarterboats away, Mr Blurt, sitting in the saloon, was heard to exclaim: "'Pon my word, it's a terrible gale enough almost to make a fellow think of his sins."