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Updated: July 23, 2025
Our men backed water so hard they held her back until the boat was hopelessly stove and had settled to the thwarts. Then we let go and drifted away, while the men aboard the Sovereign hurled belaying-pins and gratings at us. "A pleasant voyage to you," came the soft notes of Mr.
I was surprised to find that there were no guns or carronades of any kind in the vessel, which had more the appearance of a fast-sailing trader than a pirate. But I was struck with the neatness of everything. The brass-work of the binnacle and about the tiller, as well as the copper belaying-pins, were as brightly polished as if they had just come from the foundry.
The sailors also drew their knives or caught up belaying-pins or handspikes, and laid about them with the energy of despair, but to no avail. They were cut down in spite of every endeavor. The captain killed several of the Indians with his knife, and was the last to fall, overborne in the end by numbers. He was hacked and stabbed to death on his own deck.
Had to race afore it with bare poles and holding on to the belaying-pins. Tycoons they call 'em, don't they, Mr Ching?" "Gleat blow storm," said Ching, nodding. "Hullicane." "There you are, sir," said Jecks. "Hurricanes or tycoons." "Typhoons," I said. "Yes, sir, that's it, on'y you pernounces it different to me.
Philip was active, and exerted himself to the utmost, encouraging the worn-out men, securing where aught had given way, and little interfered with by the captain, who was himself no sailor. "Well," observed the captain to Philip, as they held on by the belaying-pins, "you'll acknowledge that she is a fine weatherly vessel in a gale is she not?
The fiendishness of the attack took me off my guard, for I was not prepared for such a serious fracas during the first half hour in command of the deck; but I saw there was little time to lose. There were no belaying-pins handy, so the thing for me was to get in as close as possible and get the fellow's knife.
The main-deck, between the low after-cabin and the high forecastle, had not been washed down, apparently, in a week; piles of dirty dishes and cooking-utensils of strange, unfamiliar shapes lay here and there around the little galley forward; coils of running rigging were kicking about under-foot instead of hanging on the belaying-pins; a pig-pen, which had apparently gone adrift in a gale, blocked up the gangway to the forecastle on the port side between the high bulwark and a big boat which had been lashed in V-shaped supports amidships; and a large part of the space between the cabin and the forecastle on the starboard side was a chaos of chain-cable, lumber, spare spars, pots, pans, earthen water-jars, and chicken-coops.
The crew were clinging to the belaying-pins and to such parts of the wreck as seemed likely to hold together longest. It seemed to poor Ailie, as she clung to her father's neck that she had been transported to some far-distant and dreadful scene, for scarcely a single familiar object remained by which her ocean home, the Red Eric, could be recognised.
His object was seen in a moment, for he unhooked a coil of rope from the belaying-pins, and stood ready to heave it to the approaching swimmer.
The men were beating their hands to keep them warm; and when they moved about the deck they had to keep close to the bulwarks, and catch hold of belaying-pins, ropes, or stanchions, to prevent themselves from slipping away to leeward. The sea, as it broke on board, froze on the deck, till it became one mass of ice.
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