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Our forefathers were content with hangings to keep out the draughts and open fireplaces to keep them warm. They were a hardy race, and feared not a touch or breath of cold. Their degenerate sons must have an elaborate heating apparatus, which again distresses the old timbers of the house and fires their hearts of oak.
An old miner, whose way lay past the fork in the tunnel where our lead began, showed us how to use our picks and the timbers to brace the slate that roofed over the vein, and left us to ourselves in a chamber perhaps ten feet wide and the height of a man. We were to be paid by the ton, I forget how much, but it was very little, and we lost no time in getting to work.
In a few minutes, however, the matter was set at rest the fire increased, the masts and spars of the doomed ship were enveloped in flames; and then there came a thundering report, her deck lifted, the masts shot upwards, and an instant afterwards, as they came down hissing into the water, a few blackened timbers alone remained of the stout ship which had lately floated buoyantly on the ocean with her gallant crew.
From a side-drift we crawled through a small hole and got into the midst of the earthquake again earth and broken timbers mingled together without regard to grace or symmetry. A large portion of the second, third and fourth galleries had caved in and gone to destruction the two latter at seven o'clock on the previous evening.
"Down she come with a run, struck the big timbers on the deck, and by Jiminy! ye could a-heard that old brig groan from stem to stern. "I jumped on top of the stone and threw off the shackles, and the Screamer came up on an even keel as easy as a duck ridin' the water.
More quickly than he could apprehend the gradation, it increased to a hoarse and horrible roar, as the missile that made it sprang at him out of the sky, striking with a deafening impact one of the posts supporting the confusion of timbers above him, smashing it into matchwood, and bringing down the crazy edifice with a loud clatter, in clouds of blinding dust!
But when the queer, mysterious night sounds began to come those creakings of loose planks, strainings of unseen timbers and untraceable snappings in the walls, that are common in old houses he frequently thought of the automatic revolver; and the chill of the polished metal always felt comforting enough.
"That's nothing more nor less than I would ax of your Lordship," interposed Tom; and, edging in a piece of opportune sentiment, he continued, "I have sailed three seasons with your Lordship, and I have always bore myself like a British sailor, as I be. We was joyful-like to stretch our timbers; but we warn't drunk, my Lord, notottoll."
"Well, that's unfort'nate appears as if killing parties was a waste of time. Howsomever, sperrits don't reckon for much, by what I've seen. I'll chance it with the sperrits, Jim. And now, you've spoke up free, and I'll take it kind if you'd step down into that there cabin and get me a well, a shiver my timbers!
A tremendous commotion arose; rifles blazed inside and out. Two or three Indians sprang over but were shot down. Hatchets hacked at the timbers; gun-muzzles and drawn arrows sought the crevices in the logs; piercing yells rose above the hoarse shouts of the besieged for the stockade was full of white men.
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