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Updated: June 17, 2025
With a blow of his fist he had broken the jaw of a man helplessly ironed in the 'tween-deck, and on the same voyage, armed with a simple belaying-pin, had sprung alone into a circle of brandishing sheath-knives and quelled a mutiny. He was short, broad, beetle-browed, and gray-eyed, of undoubted courage, but with the quality of sympathy left out of his nature.
There used to be such things in the old days, when thirty-five dollars were the wages out of Boston; and then you could see ships handled and run the way they want to be. But that's all past and gone, and nowadays the only thing that flies in an American ship is a belaying-pin. You don't know, you haven't a guess.
It was ticklish work, as the dusk deepened, getting from one wreck to another; and at last after nearly going down into the weed between two of them, because of a rotten belaying-pin that I caught at breaking in my hand I had to resign myself to giving over until morning any farther attempt to advance.
He answered the profanity in kind, and sent an iron belaying-pin at the engineer; but it only dented the tug's rail, and with these compliments the two craft separated, the tug steaming back to her scows. "That lessens our chance just so much," growled Elisha, as he joined the rest. "Now we can't do all we agreed to."
Few words were spoken between the watches as they shifted; the wheel was relieved, the mate took his place on the quarter-deck, the lookouts in the bows; and each man had his narrow space to walk fore and aft in, or rather to swing himself forward and back in, from one belaying-pin to another, for the decks were too slippery with ice and water to allow of much walking.
Another climbed on board. "We were not helpless," rejoined Elisha. "We had a good jury-rig under the bows, and we let it go to assist you. Are you the skipper here?" "I am." Martin's big fist smote him heavily in the face, and the blow was followed by the crash of Elisha's belaying-pin on his head. The captain fell, and for a while lay quiet.
My companion turned pale as she at length realised that it was something more that mere anger springing from my wounded dignity that was moving me; she gazed anxiously into my eyes for a moment, and then said: "Have you any weapons of any kind?" "None but these," I answered, indicating by a glance my doubled fists; "and, in case of need, a belaying-pin snatched from the rail.
The next moment some one struck him upon the head with a belaying-pin or a billet of wood, a blow so crushing that the darkness seemed to split asunder with a prodigious flaming of lights and a myriad of circling stars, which presently disappeared into the profound and utter darkness of insensibility.
There used to be such things in the old days, when thirty-five dollars were the wages out of Boston; and then you could see ships handled and run the way they want to be. But that's all past and gone; and nowadays the only thing that flies in an American ship is a belaying-pin. You don't know; you haven't a guess.
"Cheer up, captain; we'll beat them yet," I said as cheerily as I could. "We're lost," he moaned. "Light the slush-lamp, they won't bother us now." "But let's get on deck and give them a fight," I said. "It won't do any good to stay down here " The board at the scuttle rattled, and we listened. I stooped and groped for the belaying-pin. "They got below," growled Buckrow.
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