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Updated: May 17, 2025
For a time it seemed to all on board as if her destruction was imminent, but as the buoyant little craft struggled bravely on,—shipping no more water than one man with the bailer could free her of as fast as it came aboard, in the shape of spray,—they began to breathe again more freely.
*Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be stated, that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the running line with water; in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or bailer, is set apart for that purpose. Your hat, however, is the most convenient.
Many marine shells have surprisingly diminutive fleshy occupants, however great their tenacity and strength. The animal inhabiting a large-sized bailer weighs several pounds, the flesh being tough, leathery and of unwholesome appearance. When it has decayed, the shell being thin, the cavity is phenomenally capacious.
An odor of gas escaped from the casing mouth, occasionally there came hoarse, throaty gurglings of the thick liquid at the bottom of the well. The bailer was run frequently. Word had gone forth that there was something doing on thirty-five, and from the chaparral emerged muddy motor cars bringing scouts, neighboring lease owners, and even the members of a near-by casing crew.
As he slid across the muddy floor he felt the steel cable writhing under him like a thing alive, and the touch of it as it streamed into the well burned his flesh. He kicked and fought it as he would have fought the closing folds of a python, for the bailer was falling again and the wire loops were vanishing as the coils in a whiplash vanish during its flight.
There was something creepy, portentous, in the seemingly deliberate quietness with which the boat crept from the still water of the eddy toward the channel. The bailer in the stern changed color and no one spoke. There was an occasional ripple against the side of the boat but save for that distant roar no other sound broke the strained stillness.
Dan had fallen off to sleep, and Vincent had been glad to wrap himself in the thick coat he had brought with him as a protection against the heavy dews when sleeping on the river. At times sharp rain squalls burst upon them, and Vincent had no difficulty in filling up the water-bottle again with the bailer. The water was rather brackish, but not sufficiently so to be of consequence.
The canoe was badly cracked, and she could not make it water-tight; but a calabash made from a cocoanut she stored on board for a bailer. She was hard put for a paddle. With a piece of tin she sawed off all her hair close to the scalp. Out of the hair she braided a cord; and by means of the cord she lashed a three-foot piece of broom handle to a board from the salmon case.
Schofield, with the bailer in one hand, lay flat in the bottom. With the increasing sea, water splashed steadily over the sides so that his exertions never ceased. The chill of the night penetrated his soaked garments, and this, with his exhaustion, produced a stupor. The whistle of the wind and the hiss of foaming crests became dream sounds. "OH, I wouldn't think of such a thing for a minute!"
Never mind what these chattering old women in town say about him now. I never saw him this way but once before. That was when he had been given some brandy. 'Member that time, Cross, when we all went fishin' down to Pine Cove? Gosh! Must have been all of twenty years ago." All that Mr. Cross Moore emitted was a grunt, but he nodded. "Hopewell cut himself 'bad on a rusty bailer.
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