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He ordered more of his men aboard, and had all the canvas clewed up and furled snugly away. While this was being done, the boat plied back and forth between the two vessels, passing a heavy hawser, which was made fast to the great towing-bitts on the schooner's forecastle-head. During all this work the sealers stood about in sullen groups.
He thought as I did on the matter, and the result proved us correct, for while there was no perceptible diminution in the schooner's speed due to the loss of her square canvas, she looked higher and went along much more easily and comfortably than she had done before, "Now for a look at the commodore," said I, when we had snugged down the little vessel, and I took the telescope from the beckets in which it hung in the companion way.
To his surprise he observed that the schooner's head was immediately thrown up into the wind, and all her sails shook for a few moments, then, filling out again, the vessel bent gracefully over on the other tack. With returning joy the castaway saw her run straight towards him. In a few minutes she was alongside, and her topsails were backed.
"There's plenty of water up the creek," he said, "and we can snare all the quail we want; and then there's the fish and abalone. Even if the stores were gone we could make out very well." The schooner's cabin was full of water and Wilbur's hammock was gone, so the pair decided to camp on shore. In that torrid weather to sleep in the open air was a luxury.
He was then in a dangerous mood, but he had laid his plans with grim, cold-blooded caution, and he meant to adhere to them. At length, and very slowly, the light faded, until the beach grew shadowy, and the schooner's spars and rigging showed dim and blurred against a dusky background.
When Antonio Zeppa recovered consciousness, he found himself lying on a mattress in the schooner's hold, bound, bleeding, and with a dull and dreadful sense of pain at his breast, which at first he could not account for.
Mr Lovell, you will take twenty men I don't suppose there are above forty Frenchmen aboard that craft and board by the main and mizzen chains as we touch. You will have to be smart about it, as I do not want to remain alongside, grinding the schooner's side to pieces, a moment longer than is absolutely necessary.
Yes, certainly. He was even on the deck when the "Pilgrim" arrived in sight of the remains of the whale-boat. The schooner's crew had then perished before his eyes. To pretend that this catastrophe had not affected him, would be to accuse his heart. That pity for others that all people feel, he had certainly experienced it. He was equally moved by his cousin's situation. He had come to press Mrs.
He asked himself whether there was anything he had left undone, whether the tow-line would hold, and a score of other questions, while all above was calmness, and the great stars glittered and shone down from the purply black sky. "Are we to have a peaceful night?" he thought, as he looked over the schooner's counter at the dark silent vessel towed behind.
He got into the dinghy, drew in the dripping painter she cast after him, and watched her ease the sheet and set the vessel scudding for the passage. With her black hair flying in the wind, her bare arms resting lightly on the wheel, her straight, girlish, supple figure bending with the heel of the deck, she never faltered nor looked back as the water whitened and boiled in the schooner's wake.
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