United States or Christmas Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Tug's responsibility had been great that afternoon, and the strain of coaxing and commanding his scrub players to assault and defeat the heavier eleven opposed to them had worn hard on his muscles and nerves. When he got to his room he was too tired to remember that he had forgotten to take the usual precautions of locking his door and windows, or even of drawing the curtains.
I sung out to Dick Goldsmith, "Dick," I says, "she's slowed, do you see, she'll never be able to meet it," for she had slackened her engines down into a mere crawl, and I really did think they meant to give up. But there was to be no giving up with the tug's crew any more than with the lifeboat's; she held on, and we followed.
The two boys knew when they left the campus by the fact that they were bundled and boosted over a stone wall and across a road. History, as he stumbled along at. Tug's side, at length came to himself enough to be reminded of the way the ancient Romans used to treat such captives as were brought back in triumph by their generals.
Once again all became silent and unexciting on board the Gull, and I went shivering below with exalted notions of the courage, endurance, and businesslike vigour of our coast heroes. I now lay wakeful and expectant. Presently the shout came again. "Tug's in sight, sir!" And once more I went on deck with the mate.
While the tug's crew busied themselves with their duties and hastily cast off the lines, the two women were crouching in the dingy cabin. Fritz Braun, his cigar gleaming out a red defiance, watched the light of the Battery glide by him. He had taken a deep draught of brandy as a final libation to Fortune. "What fools those brewery fellows are," chuckled Braun.
The line was then taken forwards by Tim Rooney outside the rigging, he walking along the gunwale till he gained the forecastle; there, another man then lending a hand, the line was hauled in with the end of a strong steel hawser bent on to it, that had been already passed over the stern of the tug, and the bight carried across the "towing-horse" and firmly fastened to the tug's fore-deck, while our end on reaching the forecastle of the Silver Queen was similarly secured inboard, Tim satisfying himself that it was taut by jumping on it.
But either he was a moment too late in flinging, or the lifeboatmen, themselves bawling instructions to the tug's crew, were preoccupied and did not hear.
The former urged that to-morrow's tide would do, the latter gave orders to cast off, and at length observed with an angry oath that the water was falling, and he must start; and, to clinch matters, with a curt good-night, he went to the wheel and rang up his engines. Herr Schenkel landed and strutted off in high dudgeon, while the tug's screw began to revolve.
The British Towing and Shipping Company was repaid for the loss of the Vulcan, and a prize of five hundred thousand dollars distributed among the tug's crew for sinking the submarine. Thus the dreams of wealth aroused by the ill-fated Minnie B were realized in a small way by the dock's crew. No doubt Deschaillon has his frog pond, old Mrs.
Thus Orton, too ambitious, had brought his team in with this score: 1, 3, 8, 9, 10 total, 31; while Tug's men, well bunched at the finish, came in with this score: 2,4, 5, 6, 7-total, 24. Tug richly deserved the cheers and enthusiasm that greeted his management; for, in spite of a team of individual inferiority to the crack Brownsvillers; he had won by strict discipline and clever generalship.
Word Of The Day