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He slipped off the after-hatch, and dragged up from the counter a venerable relic of a spinnaker, which was one vivid mottle of mildew. The sail was duly mocked and set. The wind was freshening, and our pace increased. The cutter and her parasitical escort kicked up enough wake for a Cardiff ore-steamer. "Who says a foul bottom matters now?" said Haigh.
But the postmaster, who could be a comforter as well as a prophet of ill, took him into the little enclosure of his inner office and showed him a long list of records pencilled on the slide of his wicket. "Ice was never known to break up in Spinnaker earlier than the first week in May," said Dodge, "and this rain-spitting won't open so much as a riffle. You just keep cool and wait."
"You know there isn't goin' to be any hurry about your givin' up your present job not till spring has got well opened and the ice is out of Spinnaker," said Colonel Ward slyly, breaking in on the young man's meditations. "There's always a right time for re-signin' and we'll discover that time.
Let me mention the newest of patent capstans I put this into her myself cabins panelled in teak and pitch-pine and cushioned with red morocco, two suits of sails, besides a big spinnaker that does not belong to her present rig, a serviceable dinghy well, you can see for yourselves without my saying more, that, even to break up, she is worth quite double the money.
He bore away till he was right before the wind, hoisted every scrap of sail he could carry, rigged out a spinnaker with his balloon fore-sail, and made a clean run for the coast of Denmark. Deakin explained the manoeuvre to Duncan. "The old man's goin' poachin'. He's after soles." "Keep a look-out, lads!" cried Weeks.
The substitution of the spinnaker for the jib and foresail made a very great difference in our rate of sailing. When I first came on deck I noticed some distance astern a splendid clipper-ship, bowling along with every stitch of canvas set that would draw, up to skysails and royal studding-sails.
The postmaster's sober face hid his jest. Parker surveyed wonderingly the grins curling under the listeners' beards. "Oh, Colonel Gid Ward is comin' across in the mornin' and it's reckoned he'll burn up the ice." A cackle of laughter came from the assemblage. "There's plenty of room on Spinnaker for both of us, I think," Parker replied, quietly.
Perhaps there is a paddle, with rude tracery on the handle, from the New Hebrides, part of a Fijian canoe that has been bundled over the Barrier, a wooden spoon such as Kanakas use, or the dusky globe of an incandescent lamp that has glowed out its life in the state-room of some ocean liner, or a broom of Japanese make, a coal-basket, a "fender," a tiger nautilus shell, an oar or a rudder, a tiller, a bottle cast away fat out from land to determine the strength and direction of ocean currents, the spinnaker boom of a yacht, the jib-boom of a staunch cutter.
The spinnaker boom has caught the careless skipper and pitched him clean into the plashing waters, where he floats about, not as yet certain, probably, what course his vessel will take. She at once brings her head up to wind and puts about; but meanwhile a small boat from the lightship has picked up the unhappy skipper, and is now pulling hard to strike the course of the yacht on her new tack.
By eight o'clock that night we were off the North Foreland, bowling along at a slashing pace, with our mainsail boomed out to starboard, and our spinnaker set on the port side, jib and foresail stowed.
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