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Carried away with its driving power, the Nautilus had passed through the vessel's mass like a sailmaker's needle through canvas! I couldn't hold still. Frantic, going insane, I leaped out of my stateroom and rushed into the lounge. Captain Nemo was there. Mute, gloomy, implacable, he was staring through the port panel.
They say they are raising their heads again over on the mainland." "Well, that, of course, is a thing that comes and goes with unemployment," said Jeppe. "The people must do something. Last winter a son of the sailmaker's came home well, he was one of them in secret. But the old folks would never admit it, and he himself was so clever that he got out of it somehow."
So the manufacturer once more became a hermit; and glad as he was to be rid of the sailmaker's company, it preyed on his spirits to such an extent that he realized fully for the first time into what a hopeless cul de sac fate had thrust him in his old age. The poor old man could make no cheerful prognostications.
To my mind, it's the best thing we could do before another squall catches us." Needham's advice was immediately taken, and the wind being very light, the sails were lowered, and all hands set to work to mend them in the best fashion they could. Needham having once belonged to the sailmaker's crew, was a very fair hand at the work, but the rest were anything but expert.
He could use it for all sorts of things sailmaker's, shoemaker's, saddler's, and tailor's work was all turned out with equal celerity. He established his workshop in the chart-house, and there the machine hummed incessantly through the tropics, the west wind belt, and the ice-floes too; for, quick as our sailmaker was with his fingers, the orders poured in even more quickly.
A hundred more hands were now told off to bale at the different hatchways with canvas buckets, which the sailmaker's crew and other men had been employed in making to supplement the iron ones. Adair anxiously watched the result of their labours. "If the weather improves we shall do well yet," observed Green to the first lieutenant. "One does not see much prospect of that," was the answer.
Two maunds are put in every sack, and when weighed the bags are hauled up close to the godown or store-room. Here are an army of men with sailmaker's needles and twine. They sew up the bags, which are then hauled away to be marked with the factory brand.
The brother of this man was a seaman too, but somehow or other had been hurt of one leg, that he could not go to sea, but had worked for his living at a sailmaker's in Wapping, or thereabouts; and being a good husband, had laid up some money, and was the richest of the three.
Though the sail was eight-and-forty years old and perhaps older, it offered as tough and stout a surface to the wind as if it was fresh from the sailmaker's hands, so great are the preserving qualities of ice.
During this week, Pencroft, aided by Herbert, who handled the sailmaker's needle with much skill, worked with such energy that the sails of the vessel were finished. There was no want of cordage. Thanks to the rigging which had been discovered with the case of the balloon, the ropes and cables from the net were all of good quality, and the sailor turned them all to account.
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