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Small windows blinked alight here and there; faint, muffled sounds of awakening life came to him from the cabins; pale streamers of smoke arose into the breathless air from the little chimneys. "Now I'll pay me calls on 'em, like good Father McQueen himself," murmured the skipper. He moved across the frosty rock to the nearest door.
"It's it's about these these things." "What things? Speak out, man," he said. "Well, Sir," I blurted out. "There's some dreadful thing or things come aboard this ship, since we left port." I saw him give one quick glance at the Second Mate, and the Second looked back. Then the Skipper replied. "How do you mean, come aboard?" he asked. "Out of the sea, Sir," I said. "I've seen them.
At midnight the sleepers below heard the cry, "Haul, O! haul, haul, haul!" and they staggered to their feet in the reeking den of a cabin. "Does it rain?" "No, it snows." That was the fragment of dialogue which passed pretty often. Then the skipper inquired, "Do you want any cinder ashes?"
"Not so bad a place to be cast away in!" boomed Skipper Zeb, surveying the room with pride after depositing his gun upon the beams overhead. "What does you think of your new home, now? 'Twere easy enough to get you out o' that fix, says I! Easy enough!" "It's great!" exclaimed Charley in appreciation. "I'm going to have a bang-up time with you! I feel at home already!" "That's fine, now!
It was poor Brother Noll's boy, after all, he thought, and he could not make his heart quite hard enough to refuse him a home. So, when Skipper Ben returned to Hastings with his next cargo of fish, he carried a letter hidden away under his pea-jacket, and this was what it contained: "CULM ROCK, Sept. 12th. "To Noll Trafford: "Come; you are welcome.
The men whistled, stamped the deck impatiently, and cast anxious glances back at the cutter. "She is walking along fast," the skipper said, as he examined her through a glass. "She has got the wind steady, and must be slipping along at six knots an hour. This is hard luck on us. If we don't get the breeze soon, it will be a close thing of it."
"Twenty-six point six, sir, at the last reading of the log, about half an hour ago," answered the second officer; "and she hasn't slackened down any. At this rate we ought to be berthed in New York by noon the day after to-morrow, with a record passage to our credit." "Ay," agreed the skipper, "that's what I am hoping for in a quiet way.
Thereupon the skipper tore his hair and cried aloud, for all his men had landed and the ship was unmanned. Then were we in fear and danger, for the wind was strong and only six persons in the ship. So he said that if he could haul up the small sail he would try if we could come again to land. So we toiled all together and got it feebly about half-way up, and went on again towards the land.
Toby suggested taking Skipper Tom home with dogs and komatik, but Skipper Tom declined on the ground that it was just a wee bit of a walk, and he would rather walk and look for partridges along shore as he went. The ten mile walk to Lucky Bight was no hardship to Skipper Tom. The coming of the dogs was an exciting incident to Charley.
By his orders we took along ten empty mackerel barrels. "We'll go over to the beach first and fill these barrels up with sand." We all knew what the sand was for the Johnnie Duncan was going to be put in trim to do her best sailing. Coming down the coast the skipper and Clancy decided that she was down by the stern a trifle.
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