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They drink their tea out of tin pots, holding little less than a quart each. These particulars are not looked upon as hardships, and, indeed, may be considered matters of choice. Sailors, in our merchantmen, furnish their own eating utensils, as they do many of the instruments which they use in the ship's work, such as knives, palms and needles, marline-spikes, rubbers, etc.
This was well enough at first, but the buccaneers, who cared much less for a broken crown than for a bullet wound, pressed in closer and closer, striking with fists and marline-spikes. It was soon over. They jammed him so far into the corner than his tireless arm no longer had free play, and then bore him down under sheer weight of numbers.
For a moment, Spunyarn seems half inclined to grasp Tom by his collarless coat and shake the hydrophobia, as he calls it, out of him; then, as if incited by a second thought, he draws from his shirt-bosom a large, wooden comb, and humming a tune commences combing and fussing over Tom's hair, which stands erect over his head like marline-spikes.
This splendid lifeboat was called the Van Cook, after its donor, and was very soon afterwards summoned to the rescue for the first time. It was blowing 'great guns and marline-spikes' from the S.S.W. with tremendous sea on Feb. 7, 1865, when there was seen in the rifts of the storm a full-rigged ship on the Goodwin Sands.
Has he had his morning swim? ... Oh, there he is, paddling about like a good one! Swims like a duck, doesn't he, Squire?" "There's nothing for breakfast except bacon and eggs," said the Chief. "And coffee and rolls," added Pete, "what more do you want, you old lemon?" "No, there are only three rolls. Some of us will have to eat crackers." "I will eat marline-spikes," said Mr.
"They're bad at any price stuffed wi' cocoa-nuts and marline-spikes." Mr Sloper received this observation with the smiling urbanity of a man who eschews war at all costs. "You don't drink," he said after a time, referring to Miles's pot of beer, which he had not yet touched. Miles made no reply, but by way of answer took up the pot and put it to his lips.
The British were still seven to one; their carronades, loaded with marline-spikes, swept the gun-deck, of which we had possession, and decimated our little force; when a rifle-ball from the shrouds of the "Repudiator" shot Captain Mumford under the star of the Guelphic Order which he wore, and the Americans, with a shout, rushed up the companion to the quarter-deck, upon the astonished foe.
The men do not respect him as an officer, and he is obliged to go aloft to reef and furl the topsails, and to put his hands into the tar and slush, with the rest. The crew call him the "sailor's waiter," as he has to furnish them with spun-yarn, marline, and all other stuffs that they need in their work, and has charge of the boatswain's locker, which includes serving-boards, marline-spikes, etc.
I now turned in, and though I went to sleep in a moment I kept dreaming all the time that the pirates were boarding us, that we were fighting desperately; sometimes Captain Myers was on deck flourishing a cutlass, singing, "I'm afloat, I'm afloat," and the "Rover is free," at others, with his cut-throat companions, he was struggling in the water while old Tom was pelting them with marline-spikes.
Moreover, there were such formidable makeshift weapons as capstan-bars, marline-spikes, belaying-pins, and other instruments accessible to them at a moment's notice. If, therefore, it should come to a hand-to-hand fight, our antagonists were likely to prove rather formidable. On our own side, on the other hand, I possessed a brace of pistols, with five cartridges, and my sword.
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