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"Fine, fat, fi-i-ish!" cry out the crew in unison, and the net dips back again into the corral for another load. So, by the light of smoky torches, fastened to the rigging, the work goes on, the men singing and shouting, the tackle creaking, the waves splashing, the wind singing in the shrouds, the boat's bow bumping dully on the waves as she falls.
At her aunt's question regarding Peggy and herself resembling "meal sacks," Polly laughed aloud and being in a position to practically demonstrate the freedom which a sensibly full skirt afforded, cried: "If I couldn't run when I felt like it I'd die. I tell you, when I strike heavy weather I want my rigging ship-shape. I'd hate to scud under bare poles."
In crossing the sound they spied Yaspard gesticulating wildly from the crest of Yelholme. "Some of your men on the holme, captain?" the Doctor said, as soon as they caught sight of the figure. "I only lost one, and that may be him," was the answer; "but he fell from the rigging, and must have been awfully mashed.
Especially is this so at sea, where smoke, slack wind, and intervening rigging make signals hard to read, though they are almost the only means of communication. This was Nelson's practice; nor was Suffren a stranger to the idea. "Dispositions well concerted with those who are to carry them out are needed," he wrote to D'Estaing, three years before.
The captain, indeed, saw with clear eyes and spoke his mind aloud; and though a man of an astonishing hot-blooded courage, following life and taking its dangers in the spirit of a hound upon the slot, he had made a point of a big whaleboat. "Take your choice," he had said; "either new masts and rigging or that boat. I simply ain't going to sea without the one or the other.
"Shall I cut?" shouted Earing from the main rigging whither he had leaped, like a tiger who had bounded on his prey. "Cut!" was the answer. A loud and imposing crash soon succeeded this order, though not before several heavy blows had been struck into the massive mast itself.
That sinker drags on the bottom. This is the best rigging that I can plan at the present stage of the game. I have an idea now that a bonefish should be hooked hard and then very carefully handled. I fished off the beach awhile in front of the cabin. We used both kinds of crabs, soldier and hermit.
Further on a tangled mass of rigging had already been thrown on the shore. Perhaps a human being might be found among it. They ran on, eager to examine it. It consisted of spars and ropes and torn canvas. The latter might assist to form a roof for a hut, if not large enough for a tent.
The last bound that I gave, pitched me into the rigging of a small vessel on her beam ends, and I hardly had time to fetch my breath before she turned over. I scrambled up her bends, and fixed myself astride upon her keel. There I remained for two or three hours, when the hurricane was exhausted from its own violence.
There were moments when the eye, aided by the glass, could penetrate through the open ports into the interior of the hull, catching fleeting and delusory glimpses of the movements within. A few human forms were distinctly visible in different parts of her rigging; but, in all other respects, the repose of high order and perfect discipline was discernible on all about her.
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