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Updated: June 6, 2025
"Perhaps I do not want to be one," replied Barebone, with a ready gaiety which had already made him several friends on this tarry vessel, although the voyage had lasted but four days. "Listen," interrupted the Captain, holding up a mittened hand. "Listen! I hear a bell, or else it is my conscience." Barebone had heard it for some time. It was the bell-buoy at the mouth of Harwich River.
The water receded from him, leaving him drenched, almost dazed, but a voice within an urgent, insistent voice clamoured that his safety was at stake, his life a matter of mere moments if he lingered. This was the Death Current of which Rufus had warned him only that afternoon. Had not the bell-buoy been tolling to deaf ears for some time past? The Death Current that came like a tidal wave!
"There's no bell-buoy," said he. "No, but hark. Don't you hear the birds there's a million geese and swans and ducks calling over yonder." "Right, by George!" said he. "But where?" "They'd not be at sea, Peterson. They must be in some fresh-water lake inside some key or island. On the Long Key there's such an inland lake." "It's beyond the channel, maybe?" said he.
The climactic moment was still some distance away. But he could feel it emerging from the mist just as a pilot sights the bell-buoy that marks his changing channel. "Then might I ask what you are after?" inquired Copeland. He folded his arms, as though to fortify himself behind a pretense of indifferency. "You know what I 've been after, just as I know what you 've been after," cried Blake.
"Simple as A, B, C! Mathematical certainty!" He seemed to brace himself up and lean backward against the air as he stared at me. "How about this here tide that's rushin' out through the Golden Gate?" he demanded, or bellowed, rather. "How fast is she ebbin'? What's the drift, eh? Listen to that, will you? A bell-buoy, and we're a-top of it! See 'em alterin' the course!"
"She's a deal too pert," observed Mrs. Peck to the saucepan she was stirring. "It's my belief now that that Mr. Knight's been putting ideas into her head. She's getting wild; that's what she is." Knowing Rufus, she expected no response, and for several seconds none came. Then to her surprise she heard his voice, deep and sonorous as the bell-buoy that was moored by the Spear Point Reef.
As the buoy rolls on the sea, this ball rolls on the plate, striking some side of the bell at each motion with such force as to cause it to toll. Like the whistling-buoy, the bell-buoy sounds the loudest when the sea is the roughest, but the bell-buoy is adapted to shoal water, where the whistling-buoy could not ride; and, if there is any motion to the sea, the bell-buoy will make some sound.
Then their vessel came along with all the others accounted for, and we turned over our two and went on our way. And maybe she didn't come! Oh, no! Blowing? A living gale all the time, but the skipper kept her going. You'd hardly b'lieve if I told you where we was yesterday afternoon and we here now. A no'the-easter and a howler all the way. At four o'clock we passed in by the bell-buoy.
"Perhaps I do not want to be one," replied Barebone, with a ready gaiety which had already made him several friends on this tarry vessel, although the voyage had lasted but four days. "Listen," interrupted the Captain, holding up a mittened hand. "Listen! I hear a bell, or else it is my conscience." Barebone had heard it for some time. It was the bell-buoy at the mouth of Harwich River.
The sound of the bell could be heard clearly enough now the uncertain, hesitating clang of a bell-buoy rocked in the tideway with its melancholy note of warning. Indeed, there are few sounds on sea or land more fraught with lonesomeness and fear. Behind it and beyond it a faint "tap-tap" was now audible.
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