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Updated: June 11, 2025
"Load and fire again." My people were now furious, and fought more like incarnate fiends broke loose from hell than human beings. "Run the gun up to the hatchway once more." They ran the carronade so furiously forward, that the coaming, or ledge, was split off, and down went the gun, carriage and all, with a crash into the hold. Presently smoke appeared rising up the fore hatchway.
I dutifully answered; and, moving aft to the skylight, raised the canvas cover which had been placed over it to mask the light of the low-turned lamp which was kept burning all night in the fore cabin, and glanced at the clock which, screwed to the coaming on one side of the tell-tale compass, balanced the barometer which, hung in gimbals, was suspended on the other side.
Along the back of this, and coming to about half its width, runs the open front of the house, like a covered gallery: the interior sometimes neat and almost elegant in its bareness, the sleeping space divided off by an endlong coaming, some bright raiment perhaps hanging from a nail, and a lamp and one of White's sewing-machines the only marks of civilization.
"For, observe, Marlow," he said, making at me very round eyes which contrasted funnily with the austere touch of grey on his temples, "observe, my dear fellow, that everything depended on the men who cleared up the poop in the evening leaving that coil of rope on the deck, and on the topsail-tie carrying away in a most incomprehensible and surprising manner earlier in the day, and the end of the chain whipping round the coaming and shivering to bits the coloured glass-pane at the end of the skylight.
One o'clock came, then two; the captain gloomed and chafed, as he held to the coaming of the house, and if ever I saw dormant murder in man's eye, it was in his. God help the man that should have disobeyed him. Of a sudden he turned towards the mate, who was doing his trick at the wheel. "Two points on the port bow," I heard him say; and he took the wheel himself.
It became necessary to go about, but I gave the order to Peter very reluctantly. He handled the head-sheets, and then, instead of settling down in his old place, leaned his elbows on the coaming and stared into the sea. We were steadily approaching the lighthouse. I felt that I must run the risk of asking him a question. "What happened in the end?" I asked. "The end, is it?
They finished their task; and when Vane seized the helm Carroll sat down under the shelter of the coaming, out of the flying spray. "We'll probably have some trouble putting your friends on board the steamer, even if she runs in," he remarked. "What are you going to do if there's no sign of her?" "It's a question I've been shirking for the last half-hour," Vane confessed.
"For, observe, Marlow," he said, making at me very round eyes which contrasted funnily with the austere touch of grey on his temples, "observe, my dear fellow, that everything depended on the men who cleared up the poop in the evening leaving that coil of rope on the deck, and on the topsail-tie carrying away in a most incomprehensible and surprising manner earlier in the day, and the end of the chain whipping round the coaming and shivering to bits the coloured glass-pane at the end of the skylight.
"Back again, brother," Jack observed, as he clasped the extended hand of his partner, then, gave a queer grimace upon taking note of the splintered coaming of the sloop as well as the badly pockmarked barricade of mahogany logs. "Say, what's all this mean, I want to know looks like you might have been mixed up in some sort of rumpus while I was away!" Perk grinned and nodded his head cheerfully.
Rigging extra pumps occupied all the time until low water, and as the sluggish stream paused at slack, just before turning, every available hand in the ship ground away on brakes and chain pumps until the old brigantine gushed yellow water at every scupper. Barry, hanging over the hatch coaming, peered anxiously into the dark hold, hoping against hope that the pumps were gaining.
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