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Updated: May 4, 2025
The return to the ship involves a bloto across the bay, with many misgivings as to the seaworthy capacities of the clumsy craft, but four bamboo safety-poles, fastened by forked sticks to the sides of the hollowed log, suffice to steady it enough to avoid capsizal.
Then, while this was cooking, I returned to the cabin to lay the table, but found that Miss Onslow had forestalled me, having cleared away the wreck off the starboard locker, restored the tablecloth to its proper position, and rearranged such portions of the table equipage as had not been smashed in the capsizal.
I kept too good a look-out to apprehend any sudden calamity short of capsizal, which I no longer feared, and during the watches of that long night I dreamt a hundred waking dreams of my deliverance, of my share of the treasure, of my arriving in England, quitting the sea for ever, and setting up as a great squire, marrying a nobleman's daughter, driving in a fine coach, and ending with a seat in Parliament and a stout well-sounding handle to my name.
And if that threatened squall should burst its bonds and come shrieking and howling in fury across the surface of the sea, scourging it into a mad turmoil of foaming, leaping water and blinding spindrift, while the burnt-out crew of the schooner were making their passage across to the Mercury, it might be very bad for them; for even should they be fortunate enough to avoid capsizal, it might be exceedingly difficult, if not altogether impossible, for the ship, smitten and bowed down by the might of the tempest, to pause and pick them up.
Our main and imminent danger lay in the sudden dissolution of the ice, or in the capsizal of the berg. It was our unhappy fortune that, numerous as were the cranes overhanging the whaler's side, we should not have found a boat left in one of them. Our only chance lay in a raft; but both Sweers and I, as sailors, shrank from the thought of such a means of escape.
Indeed, so sure was I of this that I saw, next to the ice splitting and freeing her in that way, the best thing that could happen would be its capsizal. I regained the ship, and had paused an instant to look over the side, when I perceived the very block of ice on which I had come to a halt break from the bed with a smart clap of noise, and completely roll over.
As he walked from the hut down to the spot that he dignified with the name of The Dockyard, Leslie ruefully noted that the savages had played havoc with his belongings in their hurried search for booty; but as the havoc appeared to consist in a general capsizal of everything rather than in actual damage, and as the few matters that they had appropriated still remained aboard the captured canoe, he consoled himself with the assurance that, after all, there was not very much to worry about excepting, of course, the terror and suffering to which Flora had been exposed, and the killing of poor Sailor, both of which filled him with bitter grief and anger.
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