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All who were left of the old crew gathered round me while I closed my chest, and Blodgett and Davie Paine seized the beckets before I knew what they were about and carried it to my stateroom. As I passed the galley the cook stopped me. "You ain't gwine far, sah, praise de Lo'd!" he said. "Dah's a hot time ahead and we gotta stand one by anotheh. Ah's gwine keep my eye on dat yeh man f'om Boston.
No one thanked him for his trouble, they considered him something of a fool a good sailor but peculiar. The damned unexpected twists of his sense of the absurd, too, got him into constant difficulty. His father was standing outside the principal entrance; and, as he joined him on the steps, he saw two men from the Nautilus carrying his ship's desk by the beckets let in the ends.
You remember that I half quarrelled with you about something at our first meeting." "You were rather bearish," remarked Glazzard, knocking the ash off his cigar. "As I often am. Forgive me, old fellow!" Denzil relit his pipe. "The next summer I went over to Sweden again. Miss Allen was still with the Beckets, as I knew; but she was only going to stay a few months more.
"One sometimes falls in with what are rum chaps," returned the other, who, from following the London trade, had caught a few cockneyisms. "If a man chooses to keep his hands in the beckets, why let him, say I; but I take it as a slight to the company to sheer out of the usual track in such matters." "I was thinking as much myself; but after all, what can packet-masters do in such a case?
I took the glass, which we always kept slung in beckets in the companion-way, open and adjusted ready for immediate use, and as she rose once more into view I applied it to my eye, and the first thing which caught my attention was her name, painted on her stern, which was now towards us. "The Albatross, by all that's unlucky!" exclaimed I.
He thought as I did on the matter, and the result proved us correct, for while there was no perceptible diminution in the schooner's speed due to the loss of her square canvas, she looked higher and went along much more easily and comfortably than she had done before, "Now for a look at the commodore," said I, when we had snugged down the little vessel, and I took the telescope from the beckets in which it hung in the companion way.
It came into my head that the next attack would be upon my boots; for in those days secret agents frequently hid their papers above a false boot-sole, or stitched them into the double leather where the beckets, or handles, joined the leg of the boot at the rim. Sure enough, I had not been very long on deck when the ship's boy appeared before me. He was an abject looking lad, like most ship's boys.
We held on as best we could, by the beckets, which had been secured to the raft for this purpose. We had all now reason to dread that we should lose our own lives; for though the raft appeared to be still approaching the shore, yet so furiously was it tumbled about by the fast rising seas, that we could with difficulty cling on to it, while we could scarcely hope that it would hold together.
On doing so, great was their satisfaction on finding three boarding axes secured with beckets to the side. They had now tools to enable them to progress faster with the work. They ripped off all the planking from the bulwarks, and cut up as much of the deck as was above water, and by this means got into one of the larboard cabins just before the bulkhead of the state cabin.
"While they were doing it, I secured a long pike pole from its beckets, and, joined by the professor, cautiously approached the body prodding ahead of me. "As I neared the dead man, the pike pole was suddenly torn from my grasp, one end sank to the deck, while the other raised above the water; then it slid upward, fell, and floated close to me. I seized it again and turned to the professor.
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