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Updated: June 25, 2025
I had been brought up by Mr Knapps as contumelious. "Jacob Faithful, how is this? thine head is good yet wilt thou refuse learning. Tell me now, what does c-a-t spell?" It was the pitch-pipe to cat-head, and answered I accordingly. "Nay, Jacob, it spells cat; take care of thy head on the next reply. Understand me, head is not understood. Jacob, thy head is in jeopardy.
I wish I could not see them at all. And there, on my right, the pretty miniature of the Franciscan has come back again; but it seems to me as if I can only keep it in its frame by a tremendous effort of will, and that the moment I get tired the ugly cat-head will appear in its place.
Perhaps it was some such influence, as above is attempted to be described, which, in Captain Delano's mind, heightened whatever, upon a staid scrutiny, might have seemed unusual; especially the conspicuous figures of four elderly grizzled negroes, their heads like black, doddered willow tops, who, in venerable contrast to the tumult below them, were couched, sphynx-like, one on the starboard cat-head, another on the larboard, and the remaining pair face to face on the opposite bulwarks above the main-chains.
There was a thin, eddying coil of bluish smoke hurrying from the galley chimney under the high-arching foot of the fore-course and out over the port cat-head; and the watch, having no sail-trimming to attend to, were squatted upon their hams on the fore deck, playing cards.
Herbert was at once ordered to get the vessel ready for sea. Crew and sailing-master were alike eager to leave the place which had been the scene of so many horrors, and willing hands soon had the sails unfurled, the anchor on the cat-head and the helm hard down, as the vessel swung round and sped away for the broad Atlantic.
It seems needless to say that a bright lookout was kept on board the "Vigilant" that night; a man on each cat-head, two in the waist one on the weather and one on the lee side and our two selves aft were kept constantly on the alert; and with these precautions I was obliged to rest satisfied.
Moreover, I set about making ready to let go the anchor, resolving in my own mind that, as I knew the depth of water in the passage of the reef and within the lagoon, I would run the schooner in and bring up opposite the bower. Fortunately the anchor was hanging at the cat-head, otherwise I should never have been able to use it.
"Here's yon curst lubberly craft carried away our starboard cat-head and six-feet o' the harpings wi't, sink him! And us but waiting for my lady to come aboard to trip anchor and away. And now here's we shorebound for another two days at the least as I'm a gunner! And all on account of yon black dog, burn him! A plaguy fine craft as sails wi' no name on her anywheres, keelhaul me else!
The third then taking her right abeam, she careens over so far that the whole of her lee-bulwark, from cat-head to stern-davit, is ducked under water. It is a moment of doubt, with fear appalling almost despair. Struck by another sea, she would surely go under; but, luckily, the third is the last of the series, and she rights herself, rolling back again like an empty cask.
As for the schooner, she behaved like a mad thing, careening to her gunwale as she soared to the crest of a wave and cleft its foaming summit in a blinding deluge of spray that swept her decks from the weather cat-head right aft to the companion, and plunging next moment into the trough with a strong roll to windward, and a very bedlam of yells and shrieks aloft as the gale swept between her straining masts and rigging.
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