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We were all sorry to part with Garry even for the short period that would elapse before he would rejoin the old barquey, for he was the life of all us aboard; but the same regret was not felt for Master Spokeshave when we saw him go over the side to accompany the Irishman, the skipper having so decreed, as his assistant navigator, the damage to his nose not necessarily affecting his "taking the sun," though it might interfere with the little beggar's altitudes of another character.
The old barquey was certainly steaming ahead at a great rate, the sea coming up before her in a high ridge that nearly topped the fo'c's'le, and welling under her counter on either hand in undulating furrows that spread out beneath her stern in the form of a broad arrow, widening their distance apart as she moved onward, while the space between was frosted as if with silver by the white foam churned up by the ever- whirling propeller blades, beating the water with their rhythmical iteration, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump!
But, unfortunately, he failed to grasp it, and the exertion evidently being too much for him, for he tumbled forward on his face at the bottom of the boat, while the rope slipped over the side into the water, coming back home to us alongside the old barquey on the next send of the sea, the heavy roll of our ship when she brought up broadside-on, as well as the weight of the line saturated with water, fetching it in to us all the sooner.
The skipper, I could see, was not very easy in his mind when left alone; for he paced jerkily to and fro between the wheel-house and the weather end of the bridge as well as he was able, the vessel being very unsteady, rolling about among the big rollers like a huge grampus and pitching almost bows under water sometimes, though the old barquey was buoyant enough, notwithstanding the lot of deadweight she carried in her bowels, rising up after each plunge as frisky as a cork, when she would shake herself with a movement that made her tremble all over, as if to get rid of the loose spray and spindrift that hung on to her shining black head, and which the wind swept before it like flecks of snow into the rigging, spattering and spattering against the almost red-hot funnels up which the steam blast was rushing mingled with the flare of the funnels below.
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