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He rose now, and interposed himself between her and the gate. "Sink me, if it ain't her," he said slowly, surveying her from head to foot. "I were given to understand that she was a spanker, an' a spanker she be." With this oracular remark he took a step back and surveyed Kate again with his one eye.
Before nightfall on that first day they were scudding under foresail, topsail and topgallantsail and maintopsail, with the spanker furled as useless, and the jib adding its aid to the foretopmast-staysail in keeping the brig before the quartering seas which occasionally climbed aboard.
He only remarked that she might have found her own way back; then he went for home as hard as his horse could lick. "As the fellows turned-up, one after another, Spanker sent the smartest of them one to Kulkaroo, and one to Mulppa, and two or three others to different fencers' and tank-sinkers' camps. But the main thing was blackfellows.
"Now, men, take in the flying jib," cried Captain Billings, when we had come below, having so far stripped the ship for the coming fight; and the headsail was stowed, the spanker and trysail were brailed, the courses hauled up and the yards squared, when we awaited the attack of the pampero.
At 8:30 the hands were turned up, the main topsail filled, and, under topsails, jib, and spanker, and with a leadsman in the fore-chains on each side, the sloop proceeded boldly to enter the river, under the pilotage of the master, who stationed himself for the purpose on the fore-topsail yard.
He was undeterred by the barbed wire, lifting boy after boy of the boat's crew over it and dropping them sprawling into the boat, following himself, as the last, by swinging over on the spanker boom, and calling his last instructions as the painters were cast off. "Get a riding light on deck, Borckman. Keep her hove to. Don't hoist the mainsail.
Around us high volcanic hills, and under us, not a volcano but, between twenty and thirty fathoms of water. We could not anchor here, that was evident, so we set the spanker, slued about, and made tracks as rapidly as we could before the darkness should set in. Next morning we were at Nagasaki. Early on the morning of the 29th of May we sailed for the eastward, by way of the Inland Seas.
He said that it wasn't that he saw anything, because there wasn't anything to see except the spanker sheet just straining a little, and working in the sheaves of the blocks as the schooner rose to the short seas. There wasn't anything to be seen, but it seemed to him that the sheet made a queer noise in the blocks.
The course was N. N. East; but, as for the sail, I determined to stand on under our top-sails and fore-course, spanker and jib, until I could get a look by daylight.
"Son," exclaimed Kitchell "where is that man with the brains? Son, come aloft here with me." The two clambered up the ratlines to the crow's nest. Kitchell adjusted the glass. "She's a bark," he muttered, "iron built about seven hundred tons, I guess in distress. There's her ensign upside down at the mizz'nhead looks like Norway an' her distress signals on the spanker gaff.