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Updated: May 29, 2025
Here and there a lantern made an orange blur against the black. Some of the men held coils of rope with light grappling-irons spliced to the free ends. Others had home-made boat-hooks, the poles of which were fully ten feet long. They heard the dull boom of a gun to seaward. "She bes closer in!" exclaimed Pat Lynch. "Aye, closer in nor when I first heared her.
The landing-place was crowded with boats; and it was not without sundry exchanges of foul words and oaths, and the bow-men dashing the points of their boat-hooks into the shore-boats, to make them keep clear of us, that we forced our way to the beach. The marine officer and all the stewards then left the boat, and I had to look after the men.
The most cruel of cities had burst its bounds and was not to be stayed; nor would be stayed until the Seine ran red to the sea, and leagues below, in pleasant Normandy hamlets, men, for fear of the pestilence, pushed the corpses from the bridges with poles and boat-hooks.
His eyes could not penetrate the surrounding darkness. It became necessary to furl the upper sails, for the ship threatened to ground, and if she did so she was lost. "Cursed voyage!" growled André Vasling among the sailors, who, forward, were avoiding the most menacing ice-blocks with their boat-hooks. "Truly, if we escape we shall owe a fine candle to Our Lady of the Ice!" replied Aupic.
The jolly-boat had been already veered astern on receiving her allotted number, the long-boat only waiting alongside for the skipper, with a man in the bows and another amidships, fending her off from the ship's side with a couple of boat-hooks, so that the little barque should not dash against the hull of the bigger one, now she was so loaded up a collision would have insured destruction to all in her, the huge billows of the Southern Ocean rolling in at intervals, and raising her so high aloft as to overtop the ship sometimes, and again carrying her down right under the Esmeralda's counter, thus making her run the risk of being stove in every instant.
We were all day long hard at work with poles, boat-hooks, and hatchets, to ward off the larger shoals, but when the tide fell, they hung upon our cables and anchors, of which we had three out, closing in also on all sides of the boat, so that we were every moment in fearful expectation of her being carried away, and our anchors lost, which would have reduced us to the most distressing situation.
One of 'em wants to ship, sir. He's got papers." "Let them come aboard," said the officer. "It was easy enough for Jack to obey the order, for the gangway was low; but Marcy, having but one hand to work with, required a good deal of assistance. As there was considerable swell on, Julius and the boatswain's mate remained on board the schooner to fend her off with the aid of boat-hooks.
"Way enough!" added the coxswain; and the rest of the crew tossed their oars. At the gangway of the ship stairs had been rigged, at the foot of which there was a platform, for the convenience of those boarding or leaving the ship by the boats. The bowmen fastened their boat-hooks upon the platform, in readiness to haul the boat alongside, so that the passenger could step out without inconvenience.
For ten minutes, according to the official account of the affair, the air was filled with grindstones, four-pound shot, iron crows, handspikes, capstan-bars, boat-hooks, billets of wood and imprecations, and when it cleared there was not in any of the boats a man who did not bear upon his person some bloody trace of that terrible fusillade.
I looked over our resources, and found that they consisted, in the main, of eight oars, two boat-hooks, two masts, two yards, three sails, half a coil of two-inch rope that some thoughtful individual had pitched into the boat when getting her ready for launching, half a coil of ratline and two large balls of spun- yarn, due to the forethought of the same or some other individual, a painter some ten fathoms long, and the boat's anchor, together with the gratings, stretchers, and other fittings belonging to the boat, and a few oddments that might or might not prove useful.
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