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Updated: June 13, 2025
Not till a second furious blow descended did the hairy paws let go their grip and the squirming body sink limply. Before it could touch the bottom-boards, a tremendous kick in the ribs from Ricardo's foot shifted it forward out of sight, whence came the noise of a heavy thud, a clatter of spars, and a pitiful grunt. Ricardo stooped to look under the jetty. "Aha, dog!
Upon the ceasing of the rain, the bo'sun called us all together, that we might make a decent burial of the unfortunate lad, whose remains had lain during the night upon one of the bottom-boards of the boat. After a little discussion, it was decided to bury him in the beach; for the only part where there was soft earth was in the valley, and none of us had a stomach for that place.
"Here with the gaff!" cries Peer, and Peter throws it across to him. "What is it, what is it?" shriek the other three. "Steady! don't upset the boat; a catfish." A stroke of the gaff over the side, and a clumsy grey body is heaved into the boat, where it rolls about, hissing and biting at the bottom-boards and baler, the splinters crackling under its teeth.
"If we no get on shore, we all die togeder." I suggested that we might manufacture some more paddles out of the bottom-boards; and that by bending our handkerchiefs and jackets together we might form a sail, which, when the sea-breeze set in, might enable us to reach some part of the coast.
Meantime, splashing in the water which covered the bottom-boards, Ricardo congratulated himself aloud on the luggage being out of the way of the wet. He had piled it up forward. He had roughly tied up Pedro's head. Pedro had nothing to grumble about. On the contrary, he ought to be mighty thankful to him, Ricardo, for being alive at all.
But the thing that had so startled Judy was a man who was lying, apparently unconscious, on the wet and muddy bottom-boards of the little craft. Breathlessly, the girl, looking down from the top of the bank, watched for some movement; but the dirty huddled heap of wretched humanity was so still that she could not guess whether it was living or dead.
The amount of shot likely to be required was next passed down into the boats and carefully stowed upon the bottom-boards, every precaution being taken to provide against it breaking adrift with the rolling and pitching of the boats.
At the distant building the Colonel found an abandoned broken-wheeled bullock-cart, from which he looted the bottom-boards, which were planks six feet long, laid upon, but not fastened to, the framework of the body of the cart. Returning to the camel, he ascended to where his passenger and pupil awaited him.
I could hear the water washing above the bottom-boards, and I remember how concern about keeping Seraphina's feet dry mingled with the grave apprehensions of our enterprise. We had been paddling an easy stroke. The red blurr of the fire on the point was growing larger, while the diminished blaze of lights on the high altar of the cathedral pierced the mist with an orange ray.
"We must get him ashore," said my father; and after securing the boat parallel with the log which formed the bottom of the landing-place, they managed to get the poor creature, who was quite an inert mass, out upon the bank, and then, after placing one of the bottom-boards of the boat under his back, I joined in, and we dragged him right up to where the boy lay insensible.
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