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In the meantime, Mrs MacStinger, who never entered upon any action of importance without previously inverting Alexander MacStinger, to bring him within the range of a brisk battery of slaps, and then sitting him down to cool as the reader first beheld him, performed that solemn rite, as if on this occasion it were a sacrifice to the Furies; and having deposited the victim on the floor, made at the Captain with a strength of purpose that appeared to threaten scratches to the interposing Bunsby.
But John Bunsby believed in the Tankadere, which rode on the waves like a seagull; and perhaps he was not wrong. Late in the day they passed through the capricious channels of Hong Kong, and the Tankadere, impelled by favourable winds, conducted herself admirably. "I do not need, pilot," said Phileas Fogg, when they got into the open sea, "to advise you to use all possible speed."
"Confound her!" cried John Bunsby, pushing back the rudder with a desperate jerk. "Signal her!" said Phileas Fogg quietly. A small brass cannon stood on the forward deck of the Tankadere for making signals in the fogs. It was loaded to the muzzle, but just as the pilot was about to apply a red-hot coal to the touchhole, Mr. Fogg said, "Hoist your flag!"
"I see two men lying in the bottom. They are motionless. They may be dead." The boat was soon overtaken. It was the boat from the ill-fated Norman, Captain Rushton and Bunsby were lying stretched out in the bottom, both motionless and apparently without life. Bunsby was really dead.
This also appeared to be the first impulse of Bunsby, hopeless as its execution must have proved. But a cry of recognition proceeding from the party, and Alexander MacStinger running up to the Captain with open arms, the Captain struck. 'Well, Cap'en Cuttle! said Mrs MacStinger. 'This is indeed a meeting!
I saw the great man, with one foot moccasoned and the other as Nature made it, giving Bunsby opinions to a crowd of miners as to the location of the mythical mines.
God bless you for it, and for all your friendliness besides, to Solomon Gills." Bunsby! said the Captain, appealing to him solemnly, 'what do you make of this? There you sit, a man as has had his head broke from infancy up'ards, and has got a new opinion into it at every seam as has been opened. Now, what do you make o' this?
The Tankadere was a neat little craft of twenty tons, as gracefully built as if she were a racing yacht. Her shining copper sheathing, her galvanized iron-work, her deck, white as ivory, betrayed the pride taken by John Bunsby in making her presentable. Her two masts leaned a trifle backward.
Captain Cuttle observed, with a shake of his head, that Jack Bunsby himself hadn't made it out, and that he was a man as could give a pretty taut opinion too.
The boat, now lying in the trough of the waves, shook and rolled terribly. The sea struck her with fearful violence. At night the tempest increased in violence. John Bunsby saw the approach of darkness and the rising of the storm with dark misgivings. He thought awhile, and then asked his crew if it was not time to slacken speed. After a consultation he approached Mr.
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