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"All you have to do is to make your men fight, and nail your colours to the mast." "That's very true when there's a fair chance of success, but it's useless sacrificing the men against so very superior a force," replied the captain. "But it ain't superior, nor in guns is she your equal, if I know anything about a vessel. At all events, I suppose you'll have a trial for it.
Raising a mast presented another problem. He deferred consideration of that until he got the raft built. After a while Bela appeared around the shore, bringing his breakfast. Sam essayed taking a leaf out of her book by making believe to be oblivious of her. She put the plate down and watched him for a while.
Oh, I think I can hear any messages that may come in answer to ours." "But what about the aerial wires for sending and receiving messages?" asked Mr. Nestor. "Don't you have to have several wires on a tall mast?" "Yes, and that is the last thing to do," declared Tom. "I need all your help in putting up those wires.
Ah, but I've lived easy in the meantime, never denied myself o' nothing heart desires, and slep' soft and ate dainty all my days but when at sea. And how did I begin? Before the mast, like you!" "Well," said the other, "but all the other money's gone now, ain't it? You daren't show face in Bristol after this." "Why, where might you suppose it was?" asked Silver derisively.
And by this time, the brigantine having got round and presented her port battery, raked us at a bare hundred yards, and I was the first to guess by the tilting forward of the mast that our hull was hit between wind and water, and was fast settling by the bow. The schooner was sinking like a gallipot.
It had not yet finished its journey. Once more gliding back, it ascended the mast, when it made its way by the main-topmast stay, on to the foremast and there went gliding backwards and forwards along the yard. "I wish it would come down on deck, and then we might have a chance of catching it," said Tom.
Otoo signed on before the mast; and for the next half-dozen years, in as many ships, we knocked about the wildest portions of Melanesia. Otoo saw to it that he always pulled stroke-oar in my boat. Our custom in recruiting labor was to land the recruiter on the beach.
Having bought what he wanted, and learned what he could, Sam returned to his boat, and paddled down the bay to a point not far from Fort Barrancas. Here he established his fishing camp, and began work upon his rudder, mast and sail. Before the evening was over he had his boat ready for sea, and was prepared to begin the work of fishing the next morning.
The stump of a foremast showed forward and a stout maintopsail strained away amidships, while aft, where the mizzen should have been, there was nothing showing above her deck. Her main topgallant mast was also gone at the cross-trees, but the maintopsail held strongly. Altogether she was pretty well wrecked aloft.
The smaller vessel I mean the one that lay whole before us might have been a privateersman; she had something of a piratical sheer forward, there were no signs of a mast aboard either of them, one had grappled the other to board her I dare say, and they had both gone to the bottom linked.
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