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Once again the lifeboat was put about, and came up into the wind's eye, the foresail was got down and the other foresail hoisted on the other side and sheeted home, sails, sheets and blocks rattling furiously in the gale, and forwards on the other tack into the spume and sea-drift the lifeboat 'ratched. Between them and the vessel that was burning her signal of distress, the keen eyes of the lifeboatmen discerned an object in the sea, 'not more than fifty fathoms off, as much as ever it was, it was that bitter dark! Another wreck!
Then, while the ship ratched across the Basin, prior to tacking to pass out between the two Heads, Gurney and Saunders, both of whom were exceptionally powerful men, went to work to hoist the two gigs up to the davits.
Suddenly it struck me that while Atmananda might be like McMurphy, he might also be like the novel's mean-spirited antagonist, Nurse Ratched, also known as Big Nurse. Both Atmananda and Big Nurse, I realized, discouraged their wards from exploring the outdoors. I remembered Atmananda warning me, before I went backpacking in Yosemite, that he was picking up bad vibes from the trip.
Standing on as we were going, we ratched past the island until it was left a couple of miles astern of us, when we tacked ship, and brought the land on our lee beam.
Here we are, all hove-to on the larboard tack, and my impression is that both vessels have remained on that tack; but, instead of being hove-to all night, like the rest of us, they have ratched away through the fleet, and have disappeared away there in the north-western board."
The big balloon gossamer came rattling down the long stay and the jaws of the booms ratched, fore and main, as they swung over. From astern came the voices of the men in boat and dory, warning each other to hang on when they felt her jibing. Some of them must have come near to being jerked overboard. "Why in God's name don't you slack that painter?" came the voice of the skipper from the boat.
And while he ratched slowly past, striving to find with his binoculars that which was not, Michael J. Murphy and his bully boys came aft with a rush, tore aside the tarpaulin that screened the stern gun and expeditiously opened fire.
We therefore shortened sail to double-reefed mainsail, fore staysail, and jib, furling all our square canvas, and leisurely passed through the channel between Martinique and Dominica until we were some sixty miles to windward of both islands, when we headed the little hooker to the northward and ratched as far as the latitude of Antigua, then heaving about and returning over the same ground again.
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