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Opposite it is the "Quoin Hill," bluff to the stream, and falling west with gradual incline. The noise of this higher fall can hardly be heard at Nkulu, except on the stillest nights.
It was on the Friday night, that the Second Mate had the watch aloft looking for the man up the main; and for the next five days little else was talked about; though, with the exception of Williams, Tammy and myself, no one seemed to think of treating the matter seriously. Perhaps I should not exclude Quoin, who still persisted, on every occasion, that there was a stowaway aboard.
But though Quoin, as it afterward turned out, had indeed found the box, it so happened that he had not destroyed it; which no doubt led Lemsford to infer that a superintending Providence had interposed to preserve to posterity his invaluable casket. It was found at last, lying exposed near the galley. Lemsford was not the only literary man on board the Neversink.
At the middle of the forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, and then you have two almost equal parts, which before were naturally divided by an internal wall of a thick tendinous substance. *Quoin is not a Euclidean term. It belongs to the pure nautical mathematics. I know not that it has been defined before.
Quoin was a little old man-of-war's man, hardly five feet high, with a complexion like a gun-shot wound after it is healed. He was indefatigable in attending to his duties; which consisted in taking care of one division of the guns, embracing ten of the aforesaid twenty-four-pounders.
To Quoin, the honour and dignity of the United States of America seemed indissolubly linked with the keeping his guns unspotted and glossy. He himself was black as a chimney-sweep with continually tending them, and rubbing them down with black paint. He would sometimes get outside of the port-holes and peer into their muzzles, as a monkey into a bottle.
I replied. "Yes," he said. "Weren't ther Old Man talkin' ter yer, up on ther poop this mornin'?" "Yes," I answered. "He said something to the Second Mate about shortening down; but it wasn't to me." "They are!" said Quoin, "'aven't I just said so?" At that instant, one of the chaps in the other watch, poked his head in through the starboard doorway.
So great was the carnage, that the hatches were opened, and the dead bodies passed below, that the men might have room to work the guns. Among the slain was Mr. Gamble, the first lieutenant, who was on his knees sighting a gun, when a shot entered the port, split the quoin, drove a great piece of metal against his breast, and stretched him dead upon the deck without breaking his skin.
Quoin, the quarter-gunner, was the representative of a class on board the Neversink, altogether too remarkable to be left astern, without further notice, in the rapid wake of these chapters. As has been seen, Quoin was full of unaccountable whimsies; he was, withal, a very cross, bitter, ill-natured, inflammable old man.
We had reached the t'gallant rigging, and he was pointing up to the royal yard. "Ye're a fule, Quoin. That's what ye are." The voice came from above. It was Jock's, and there was a burst of laughter at Quoin's expense. I could see Jock now. He was standing in the rigging, just below the yard. He had gone straight away up, while the rest of us were mooning over the top.
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