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The passengers were then taken aboard in slings rigged on the spanker-boom, which was swung over the lee quarter for the purpose. Part of the boat's crew were taken on board in the same way, and then the gig was hoisted up to the davits with the rest in her.
Our prizes, the buck and the bananas, were cordially welcomed on board the old barkie; the bananas being carefully suspended from the spanker-boom to ripen at their leisure, whilst the buck was handed over to the butcher to be operated upon forthwith, so far at least as the flaying was concerned; and on the morrow all hands, fore and aft, enjoyed the unwonted luxury of venison for dinner.
There's not much climbing in getting on board of a gunboat; indeed, we were at it before we were out of the boat, for the Frenchmen had pikes as long as the spanker-boom; but we soon got inside of their points, and came to close work.
The ship paid off, but at a critical moment the spanker-boom sheet fouled the wheel; still, we managed to get the vessel round, but scarcely were the braces belayed and the ship on the starboard tack, when she struck the ground broadside on. She was a soft-wood built ship, and she trembled, sir, as though she would go to pieces at once like a pack of cards.
Well, as I was sayin' when you interrupted me, wot a happy life we could live here if we'd only got the old girl with us! I'd be king, you know, Cuff, and she'd be queen, and we'd make you prime minister you're prime favourite already, you know. There now, if you don't clap a stopper on that ere spanker-boom, I'll have to lash it down.
From that time he grew steadily better, and in another day or two he was able to leave his cot and to indulge in a bath, a clean shave, and an hour or so on deck, half-sitting, half-reclining in a hammock which the skipper had ordered to be slung for him from the spanker-boom.
"And if I'd wanted to help 'em to get on deck, do you think I should ha' been such a fool as to tie a bit o' signal halyard to the spanker-boom, when I could ha' made a bit o' strong rope fast to the belaying-pins, and hung it over the stern?" Jarette growled out something we could not hear. "Then it must have been one of them two," said Bob Hampton; "or they chucked it up from the cabin-window."
I find in my notes, taken shortly afterwards, from the dictation of an intelligent midshipman, "that the fore royal-yard got jammed with the spanker-boom, and carried away the larboard quarter boat." Nautical friends have since pointed out to me that this involves an impossibility. I daresay it does.
Ay, and Oi'll send ye off a topsail to throw over the spanker-boom and so make ye two illigant staterooms, one on each side the deck." "It certainly must be some very extraordinary service that he wishes me to render him!" thought I. But I answered: "Very well.
"That's your sort, my hearties! another like that and it's home! Pitch into it, Mivins. You're the boy for me! Now then, Grim, trip him up! Hallo! Buzzby, you bluff-bowed Dutchman, luff! luff! or I'll stave in your ribs! Mind your eye, Mizzle! there's Green, he'll be into your larboard quarter in no time. Hurrah! Mivins, up in the air with it. Kick, boy, kick like a spanker-boom in a hurricane!"
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