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"'Tis you who are the cool one, Jem!" said he with admiration, "trying to make them think you were him!" Here I was evidently indicated by a sideways bob of the head. "Have you not been seeing the fine ways of him? Sure, be looking at his stride and his habit of slatting people over the head, and his grand manners with his food.

Exhausted as they were, they must turn out and wrestle with that slatting, ice-sheathed canvas, and it was not until half an hour later that everything was fast again. Once more they crawled into the sleeping-bags, but soon the heat from their bodies melted the ice upon their clothes, and pools of water formed under each man, wetting him to the skin. Sleep was impossible.

"And over their grunts and groanings, over the noise of the wolves and hyenas, the tiger and lion, and the slatting and bumping of the broken gear against the mast, and the sounds of sea and wind, rose supreme to our ears the blatant squealing and trumpeting of that mad elephant in the 'tween-decks. "Added to this were the insane orders to us fellows of the skipper and the two mates.

"Ay, ay, sir!" came the response, faintly heard above the howl of the wind, the thunder of the surf on the rocks to leeward, the heavy "slosh" of a sea in over the bows, and the hair-raising slatting of the canvas overhead.

But they never took it in; for at that moment it started to blow away out of the bolt-ropes, and in but few moments all that was left of it was a few short, slatting ribbons. "Mizzen-topgallant-sail!" Mr. Pike ordered. Then, and for the first time, he recognized my existence. "Well rid of it," he growled. "It never did set properly.

The next moment, both vessels having been headed sharply into the wind, lay side by side, heaving and grinding against each other, with their sails slatting noisily overhead. As our lads realised the true character of the other craft, they were ready to laugh at their fright of a minute earlier, for she was only an open fishing boat, carrying three men, a woman, and a couple of children.

The mates are in the weather-rigging before the word is out of the captain's lips, to take the earings of their respective topsails; and then follows the rush of men up the shrouds and out along the yards. The sails are slatting and flapping, and one can hardly see the row of broad backs against the dusky sky as they bend over the canvas.

Widening horizons, slatting of cords and sails in the wind, storms and stars and strange landfalls and long idle calms, thunder of surges, tingle of spray, and eternal labouring and threshing and cleaving of infinite waters these were to be his portion and true home hereafter.

The fish bit at the newly baited hooks from which their brethren had just been taken, and Tom Platt and Long Jack moved methodically up and down the length of the trawl, the boat's nose surging under the wet line of hooks, stripping the sea-cucumbers that they called pumpkins, slatting off the fresh-caught cod against the gunwale, rebaiting, and loading Manuel's dory till dusk.

"But Bridget, she thought different, and declared that I had never so much as thought of her and the childer all day, but left her at the wash-tub, while they, the poor craiturs, were poppin' out and in of the stalls and crawlin' under the slatting canvas of the shows, as happy as larks, having their fun all for nothing, and double rations of it when they were caught, cuffed, and chased out.