United States or Malaysia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the night of the 20th to 21st of January we were overtaken by a very violent storm, which so damaged our mainmast that the captain determined on running into some haven on the first opportunity, and putting in a new one. For the present the old one was made fast with cables, iron chains, and braces. In 43 degrees North lat. we saw the first sea-tangle.
It must have been only a few seconds when the brig rose once more, and looking along the deck I saw that our remaining mast had gone as had the bowsprit, while, besides Mr Harvey, I could distinguish but one man alone on the deck, holding on to the stump of the mainmast. At first I thought that Mr Harvey might have been killed, but he was only stunned, and speedily recovered.
His mainmast had broken off eight or ten feet below the head. They were clearing away the wreckage. "I s'pose I oughter had more sense," he called out as we went by. "Oh, I don't know maybe the spar was rotten," said Maurice, and that was a nice way to put it, too. That night it came a flat calm, and with barely steerage way for us.
From the mainmast of the flagship "Minnesota" waved the signal-flags, changing constantly as different orders were sent to the commanders of the other warships. At two o'clock three balls of bunting were run up to the truck, and catching the breeze were blown out into flags, giving the order, "Get under way at once."
Jeremy felt a momentary pang at the thought of leaving even that graceless crowd in such jeopardy, but he remembered that they had the brig's boats in which to leave the hulk, and his own present danger soon gave him enough to occupy him. Job lashed the tiller and going to the lanyard at the mainmast, hauled down the black flag. Then they both set to work cleaning up the deck.
"Faith, ye're roight, sor; we'd betther count noses an' have the job over," returned Garry, sotto voce, singing out in a louder key to the survivors of the fray, who were grouped in the waist about the mainmast, where the remaining Haytians who had not been killed outright were tied up feet to the wrists, as the skipper had told Colonel Vereker when he came up.
A war of words ensued; but the explanations given under the attendant circumstances were so unsatisfactory, that the vigilant chief of the customs clapped his broad mark on the mainmast, and seized the vessel and the unfortunate cask of rum in the name and behalf of the United States!
Hermann was sewing alone. As Falk stepped over the gangway, Hermann's niece, with a slight swish of the skirt and a swift friendly nod to me, glided past my chair. They met in sunshine abreast of the mainmast. He held her hands and looked down at them, and she looked up at him with her candid and unseeing glance.
He was always walloping us boys, and swearing and kicking and cuffing us about. Then we had a storm, and lost our mainmast, and came near foundering; and then we were stuck in a calm for three weeks, and the water aboard ran short. That was the time I had the fever. I'd have died, I know, if it hadn't been for Tad Brice. He was one of the sailors, and a real nice man.
"You did did you?" said Perth, severely. "Then you called me to an account, and now you acquit me!" "I beg your pardon. Whatever I said, I did not mean anything disrespectful," pleaded Robinson. "Is this the kind of discipline among the officers? If it is, I don't wonder that the crew get snarled up. I don't like to blow on a fellow, but I'm tempted to send you to the mainmast."
Word Of The Day