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Always. As far back as I can remember. Don't you recollect? What about that half-starved dog you brought on board in Bankok in your arms. In your arms by . . . ! It went mad next day and bit the serang. You don't mean to say you have forgotten? The best serang you ever had! You said so yourself while you were helping us to lash him down to the chain-cable, just before he died in his fits.
To the neck of the bottle I made fast the end of about a fathom of marline, and then, going forward, I made fast the other end of the marline to one of the links of the chain-cable by which we were riding to our floating-anchor. I then sung out to Bob to give her a few fathoms more chain, and as he did so I hove the bottle overboard.
In one hand the stately dame lightly swung a bag that was worthy of holding the Great Seal itself, so rich and so elaborate were its materials and embroidery; and in the other she at length took a glass which was suspended from her neck by a chain-cable of gold, and glanced with a flashing eye, as dark as her ebon curls and as brilliant as her well-rouged cheek, at the surrounding scene.
'I recommend you to ring that bell, and have Mrs. Culling here. 'If she comes she will hear what I think of her. 'Then, out of the house! 'Very well, sir. You decline to supply me with money? 'I do. 'I must have it! 'I dare say. Money's a chain-cable for holding men to their senses. 'I ask you, my lord, how I am to carry on Holdesbury? 'Give it up.
But this made me very qualmish; and soon I felt sick as death; my head was dizzy; and I went staggering along the walk, almost blind. At last I dropt on a heap of chain-cable, and shutting my eyes hard, did my best to rally myself, in which I succeeded, at last, enough to get up and walk off.
"Although the sun was obscured by mists," Trelawney writes, "it was oppressively sultry. There was not a breath of air in the harbor. The heaviness of the atmosphere and an unwonted stillness benumbed my senses. I went down into the cabin and sank into a slumber. I was roused up by a noise overhead, and went on deck. The men were getting up another chain-cable to let go another anchor.
Naval officers on this coast report that, when scorpions and centipedes remain a few weeks after being taken on board in a similar manner, their poison loses nearly all its virulence; but this we did not verify. Snakes sometimes came in with the wood, but oftener floated down the river to us, climbing on board with ease by the chain-cable, and some poisonous ones were caught in the cabin.
I shook myself, turned away, and tried to persuade myself that I was dreaming. Perhaps I had been doing so. At least, I remember very little more, till I was roused by the rattling of the chain-cable through the hawse-hole, opposite the pier-head. And now, gentle readers, farewell; and farewell, Clovelly, and all the loving hearts it holds; and farewell, too, the soft still summer weather.
The chain-cable tightened, the capstan creaked, and the paddles dashed round; but we did not stir an inch till the natives, who had been so unceremoniously turned overboard, began to apply the pressure from without, when, amidst shouts and yells, and curses in a dozen different languages, we slid along the surface of the bank until we reached a deeper channel.
We have moved a little farther up the river this morning, and as we are, like St. Paul, dropping an anchor from the stern, I have had over my head for several hours the incessant dancing about and clanking of a ponderous chain-cable, till my brains are nearly all shaken out of their place. December 26th. I have a second letter from Yeh, which is even more twaddling than the first.
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