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The slight delay thus incurred threatened to have the most disastrous consequences; for when the chief mate was once more free to proceed upon his errand he became aware that the ship's inclination had sensibly increased, to such an extent indeed that he momentarily expected to feel her rolling bottom-up.
The wind, which had been blowing a whole gale a moment before, fell dead in an instant, an appalling darkness overspread the firmament, and the atmosphere suddenly became so rarefied that it seemed impossible for one to draw a full breath; the sea, which a moment earlier had been breaking furiously, ceased to do so, and instead began to leap high into the air, falling back with a splash that, in the sudden stillness, seemed positively terrifying, and the schooner, swinging broadside-on, rolled so furiously that she momentarily threatened to turn bottom-up, while those of us who were on deck had to seize hurriedly the first fixed portion of the vessel's framework that we could lay hands on, to save ourselves from being pitched overboard like a shot out of a catapult.
Bob and his fellow apprentices, together with Lance and Rex, were soon summoned, and preparations made for bearing up. It was an anxious moment, for should the boat be caught broadside-on by a breaking sea she would to a dead certainty be turned bottom-up, when nothing could save her occupants.
My boat was brought in, and placed bottom-up along one side of the hovel, and immediately the keel was occupied by a legion of poultry, and half a score of pigs, little and big, were at the same time to be seen dubbing their snouts under the gunnel, on voyages of alimentary discovery.
Those men had faith even in their own shoe-strings. After all, how is our poor scapegoat of a nineteenth century to blame? Why, for not being the seventeenth, to be sure! It is always raining opportunity, but it seems it was only the men two hundred years ago who were intelligent enough not to hold their cups bottom-up.
The barns were large; a forge stood under an open shed indescribably littered with scrap iron and fragments of all sorts; saddles hung suspended by the horn or one stirrup; bright milk pails sunned bottom-up on fence posts; a dozen horses cropped in a small enclosed pasture or dozed beneath one or another of the magnificent and spreading live-oak trees.
If that towering berg ever did turn over bottom-up it would smash the floe into fragments and churn up the adjacent waters in a way that would leave no avenue of escape for the trio of adventurous air pilots who had alighted there by reason of circumstances beyond their control.
It was a terrible sight all around men swimming and sinking. "I lay where I was, letting the man wrench my feet out of shape. Others came near. Nobody gave them a hand. The bottom-up boat already had more men than it would hold and it was sinking. "At first the larger waves splashed over my head and I had to breathe when I could. "Some splendid people saved us.
Accordingly he set himself to follow the creek, the one stream of pure and limpid water that did not flow bottom-up.
"You know out here, except in the rainy season, the rivers all flow bottom-up." They all guffawed at this ancient and mild joke. The old farmer wagged his head. "Water is King," said he solemnly, as though voicing an original and profound thought. A look of satisfaction overspread the countenance of the particular salesman who had the old farmer in charge.
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