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Updated: September 20, 2025
There were piles of old rigging, iron bolts and rings, tarred parcelling, and cabin-doors, in fact, all the spoils that a treacherous sea had thrown upon the beach; a sea so disastrous to many, but so friendly to the Barnegat wrecker, who, by the way, is not so black a character as Mistress Rumor paints him.
"I know that the cabin-doors were open," he said, "and if they wasn't, of no great matter would it be, since the joints ar'n't caulked, and the water would run through them as through a sieve. I'm afeard, Mr. Mulford, we shall find the wreck going from under our feet afore long, and when we least wish it, perhaps."
And as we listened, I, horror-stricken, and in the full belief that poor Miss Denning had been shot, perhaps in trying to save her brother, a couple more of the cabin-doors were opened and closed; then there was a good deal of talking and the giving of orders.
As one of the main hatches was off, and the cabin-doors, and booby-hatch doors forward were open, and all were under water, it required a little reflection on the part of Mulford to understand on what circumstance all their lives now depended.
And on these sun-baked mornings he would insist that his servers should kneel at their place beside the altar in their white sporting attire. "His Mass," said he, "was meant to be mixed up with the week-day play." It was all quiet in fact, ever so quiet. Outside on the deck there would be noises, and in the alley-way there would be bangings of cabin-doors, and voices calling for the bath steward.
"I'll just go for'ard and get a bit of wire, and I'll pick the locks of them cabin-doors in next to no time, and make no noise about it either." "Then come along and let us get it done at once. That must be our first job," said I.
Finding everything quiet, he ventured into the fore-chains, and thence on deck, accompanied by three of his men. He found Harris, snoring with his back supported against a gun-carriage, and immediately secured him. Then, it only remained to close the forescuttle and the cabin-doors, and to fasten them, to have us all prisoners below.
"Nothing more, thank you except, perhaps, that you might suggest the value of quietness of movement on the part of anyone coming below. No slamming of cabin-doors, or anything of that sort, you know," answered the first voice, which I now recognised as that of the ship's doctor on board the City of Cawnpore.
The reason assigned for not putting Venetian blinds to the cabin-doors was this: it would injure the appearance of the cabin an appearance certainly not much improved by the dirty sail which hung against our portal.
All this time there was not a breath of wind save what was created by the schooner as she rolled heavily on the gathering swell; not a sound save those which arose within her as the bulkheads and timbers creaked and groaned dismally, the cabin-doors rattled, the rudder kicked as the water swirled and gurgled about it and under her counter with the heave of her, and the jerk of the spars aloft, or the slatting of the braces as she swayed, pendulum-like, from side to side.
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