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Updated: June 11, 2025
"If Dason could only have foreseen this honour," said Tob, with grisly jest, "I'm sure he'd have laid in a silken warp to make fast on the bollards instead of mere plebeian hemp. I'm sure there'd be a frown on Dason's head this minute, if the sun hadn't scorched it stiff.
A steep ledge of ground offered a natural pier, with tree-stumps for bollards. He let her come gently beyond the spot; reversed the propellers just at the right time, and backed neatly alongside. He moved the telegraph handle to FINISHED WITH ENGINES; ran out the gangplank smartly, and stepped ashore. He moored the vessel fore and aft, and hung out fenders to prevent chafing.
It was of a similar pattern to all the others I had seen; a lighter, strictly, in the sense that it had no means of self-propulsion, and no separate quarters for a crew, the whole interior of the hull being free for cargo. At both bow and stern there were ten feet or so of deck, garnished with bitts and bollards.
"As soon as the ould schooner was riddy to start with all thim mules aboard, we got a tugboat to take us in tow down the harbour out to the Narrows, as they calls the entrance to Noo Yark Bay; and whin the tug's hawser was fetched over our bows to be fastened to the bollards I sees that the rope's a bran-new Manilla one. "`Aha, thinks I, `that's a foine pace of rope anyhow!
Besides, it saves us miles to go this way, and it really won't do for you to be late for dinner." Thomas Antony Kinsella sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the quay. Beneath him lay his boat. The tide was flowing, but it had not yet floated her. She was supported on an even keel by the mooring ropes made fast from her bow and stern to bollards on the quay.
The Commander, perhaps the busiest man on board, snatched the moment's respite to confer with the Carpenter, who had been hovering round waiting for his opportunity. The Master-at-Arms was standing by the bollards alternately sucking a stump of pencil and making cryptic notations in his request-book.
A fine timber wharf extended along the entire northern side of the island, with massive bollards sunk into the soil at regular intervals for ships to make fast to; half a dozen trunk buoys occupied the middle of the fairway; and the whole settlement was completely screened from prying eyes by the heavy belt of standing timber that had been left undisturbed on the southern shore of the island.
'Spruce ahoy! he blared through the speaking trumpet two or three times. There seemed to be a reply of some sort from the steamer. 'Tuesday's gale hev loosened the pier, Cap'n Ounce; the bollards be too weak to make fast to: must land in boats if ye will land, but dangerous; yer wife is out of danger, and 'tis a boy-y-y-y!
The lines ran down to their proper bollards, as usual, and the river sluiced swiftly alongside, swirling musically between the rotten piles of the ramshackle wharf. "Some current!" grumbled the mate, testing a line with his full weight thrown on one foot. "Better give her a bit more on all the lines, Blunt. Not much. Couple of feet or so. Seems as if the river rises at night.
The old seaman laughed and moved off again to his telegraphs. The business of running in to the quayside was beginning in earnest. The hawsers creaked and strained at the bollards. The vessel yawed. Then she settled at her berth. The engine-room telegraph chimed its final order, and the vessel's busy heart came to rest.
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