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"It was in the year 1445 that's not far short o' four hundred years ago ah! tempus fugit, which is a Latin quotation, my girl, from Horace Walpole, I believe, an' signifies time and tide waits for no man; that's what they calls a free translation, you must know; well, it was in the winter o' 1445 that a certain Alexander Ogilvy of Inverquharity, was chosen to act as Chief Justiciar in these parts I suppose that means a kind of upper bailiff, a sort o' bo's'n's mate, to compare great things with small.
Not one of his fellows but envied the young ensign as he left the ship, steered by Timmins, a veteran bo's'n's mate, wise in all the ins and outs of sea ways. They saw him board, neatly running the small boat under the schooner's counter; they saw the foresheet eased off and the ship run up into the wind; then the foresail dropped and the wheel lashed so that she would stand so.
That day's papers had spoken of probable war, and Royson wanted to be there. He had dreamed of doing some work for the press, and was a reader and writer in his spare time, while he kept his muscles fit by gymnastics. But those past yearnings were merged in his new calling. He was a sailor now, a filibuster of sorts. The bo's'n's whistle would take the place of the bugle-call.
The third officer, the eighteen-year-old lad, fought well beside me, and saved me, so that, just before I fainted, he and I, between us, hove the bo's'n's carcass overside." A shifting of feet and changing of positions of those in the cabin plunged Daughtry back into his polishing, which he had for the time forgotten.
It was as though, entering a cottage door, you were to discover yourself on the floor of Madison Square Garden. A fresh sweet breeze of evening sucked down the hatch. I immediately decided on the forecastle. Already it was being borne in on me that I was little more than a glorified bo's'n's mate. The situation suited me, however.
Fifteen minutes later Ensign Edwards, with a quartermaster, Timmins, the bo's'n's mate, and a crew, was heading a straight course toward his first command, with instructions to "keep company and watch for signals"; and intention to break into the brass-bound chest and ferret out what clue lay there, if it took dynamite.
The face revealed was that of Timmins, the bo's'n's mate, who had sailed with the first vanished crew. A life preserver was fastened under his arms. He was dead. "I'm out," said the surgeon briefly, and stood with mouth agape. Never had the disciplined Wolverines performed a sea duty with so ragged a routine as the getting in of the boat containing the live man and the dead body.
Just then the bo's'n's stentorian voice was heard giving the order to close reef tops'ls, and the hurried tramping of many feet on the deck overhead, coupled with one or two heavy lurches of the ship, seemed to justify the assistant cook's remark "Sure it's durty weather we're goin' to have, annyhow."
Once he raised his cutlass and seemed about to sweep off the bo's'n's head with it. At last he said in a choked voice "'Well, for goodness' sake, think! Can't you remember what you did with it? "Aaron shook his head dumbly. Then as he stood there, quaking, a sudden gleam of intelligence came into his eye. "'That's it! he said,'that's it.
And such another powwow thousands of bo's'n's whistles screaming at once, and a crew like the populations of a hundred thousand worlds like ours all swearing at once. Well, I never heard the like of it before.
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