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But the little maid struck an attitude, and tapped the floor with her foot. "I will not," she said. "What is the Duke Casimir to me that am a Princess? If he is good, I will give him my hand to kiss!" But at this point I rushed from the ladder-head, and, taking her in my arms, I sped up the turret stairs with her out upon the leads, my hand over her mouth all the time.
"I come up to take the watch and find the Dutchman hangin' over the port ladder bleedin' like a dead goose! More work of yer fine passengers, that's what it is, and ye know why." A lantern flickered above the storm-apron and then swung in the break of the bridge-rail at the ladder-head, and I saw Harris moving something which hung limply as he dragged it behind the canvas.
It was damnable! He pulled himself together with a jerk. Here he was becoming unjust, irritable, womanish; everything he had always most despised in a man of action. A shout came to him from seaward. A shot followed. The perspiration started to his forehead. He ran to the ladder-head. In the dimness below he could see the old foretop-man sitting alert beside the black square of the open trap.
"Hold the candle and your tongue too, confound you!" he told the grumbling butler, indignant at being brought from bed. Dick had already put the silver tube in place. Tom Tripe raised the stone and saw it uttered a tremendous oath and dropped the heavy stone back over the hole. "What are you doing?" Dick demanded from the ladder-head, appearing with a lantern from behind the raised trap.
However, early the next day hope revived when five men entered, four mounting among the beams to the swing-beam with tools, one at the ladder-head shouting up orders; and Hogarth, when they had gone, whispered Harris: "They have been unscrewing the sockets in which the bell-beam swings". "Let them unscrew away", said Harris, his chin shivering on his hand.
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