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Updated: May 22, 2025
Following the venison, the tart, and apple brandy came the short, bright afternoon, passed by Lewis Rand upon the brig from the Indies with Tom Mocket and little Vinie and a wrinkled skipper who talked of cocoanuts and strange birds and red-handkerchiefed pirates, and spent by Gideon first in business with the elder Mocket, and then in conversation with Adam Gaudylock.
Black clouds had banked up from the southwest, and extended in a heavy arch across the sky, but little ahead of the brig. From its edge ragged, fragments seemed to break off suddenly, and fly out ahead. "It is going to blow, and no mistake," the captain said. "It is lucky that we have had plenty of time to get her into fighting trim.
But man, proud man, Dress'd in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven. The reef upon which the brig had been wrecked was one of those extending along the southward of the Virgin Isles.
I had already lost a great deal of confidence in the captain's tales, but I kept my eye steadily fixed upon a Hamburgh brig, that happened to be sailing ahead, to see whether she would dance; but neither she nor our own bark was so obliging.
"Very well. I am sorry for the poor devils forward there if you fail. But of course you won't. Watch that light on the brig. I had it hoisted on purpose. The trouble may be nearer than we think. Two of my boats are gone scouting and if the news they bring me is bad the light will be lowered. Think what that means. And I've told you what I have told nobody. Think of my feelings also.
You stay around home, yelling for the Confederacy, and flinging your slurs at we uns who have been under the fire of a Yankee war ship, but you ain't got the pluck to go into the service yourself. We didn't see but one merchantman while we was gone and she was a brig; and as she carried three times the canvas we did she had the heels of us, and besides she wouldn't let us come within range.
Jasper could get no explanation of that remark, because the Dutchman got into the boat hurriedly, and went back on board the brig. But he consoled himself with the thought that very soon all this unpleasant and rather absurd experience would be over. The roadstead of Makassar was in sight already. Heemskirk passed by him going on the bridge.
They would await the passing of another hour, until two bells of the first watch, by which time they calculated the brig should be in the wide, outer channel between the seaward islands. The plan was to emerge through the forepeak in the very bows of the ship where a scuttle was let into the deck.
In the mean time, boats had put off from our ships and the whaler, and coming all on board the brig together, they let go the other anchor, paid out chain, braced the yards to the wind, and brought the vessel up.
As the sloop I named lay by the brig some time, in a calm, the two captains had a long talk together; and ours had prepared us to hear of our kinsman's speedy dissolution. He was in a decline when he landed, and we suppose that no human skill could have saved him. As he had so skilful a physician, and one who came so far, I suppose my uncle must have left property?"
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