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Then I followed the rest of the party up on to the poop, and bade them pull the two poop-ladders up after them. The poop and topgallant forecastle thus formed two citadels, of a sort, capable of being pretty fairly defended, except in the face of an overwhelming force.
Pell-mell they tumbled down the poop-ladders; pell-mell they raced amidships past that yawning open furnace; the pitch was boiling through the seams of the crackling deck; they slipped and fell upon it, one over another, and the wonder is that none plunged headlong into the flames. A handful remained on the poop, cowering and undone with terror.
At dinner on the third day the second mate remarked to the captain, in connection with the affair: "These half-round brass plates on the steps of the poop-ladders are beastly dangerous things!" "Are they?" retorted Captain Johns, sourly. "It takes more than a brass plate to account for an able-bodied man crashing down in this fashion like a felled ox." The second mate was impressed by that view.
Captain Johns was annoyed and hurt by an innocent remark, because the fitting of the aforesaid brass plates had been done at his suggestion only the voyage before, in order to smarten up the appearance of the poop-ladders. On the fourth day Mr.
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