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Updated: June 8, 2025
Now, let the hands be piped down." I had paused just below and under cover of the coamings long enough to hear this speech to its conclusion; now, as the boatswain's pipe sent forth its shrill sounds, I scurried off and made the best of my way to the midshipmen's berth.
To make sure that whatever strength is taken out by cutting is restored in some other way, and that the exposed deck which has to resist the strains put upon the structures built into it is specially reinforced, the most careful provision must be made for the mast-holes; for the hatchways with their coamings fore and aft on carlings that reach from beam to beam; for the riding bitts, which are posts to hold the cable when the vessel is at anchor, and which must therefore be immensely strong; for the windlass, which in the merchant service often did the double duty of the bitts and capstan; and for a multiplicity of other parts.
"When we left this here craft, sir, you'll remember, she had almost turned turtle, laying over so far as to bring her upper coamings under water; now she stands right side up, as erect as if docked! My navigation can't get along with this, Mr. Mulford, and it does seem like witchcraft." "It is certainly a very singular incident, Jack, and I have been trying to come at its causes."
This being done, he laid a train from it to the end of the plank, made a slow-match with some wet powder and a piece of paper, and finished by raising the planks by stuffing blankets under them at Hilary's suggestion, till the powder charge was right up in the opening of the hatch, surrounded by the coamings, and the planks rested up against the deck.
"Do," said Captain Dinks; but ere he could get out the word, the mate, taking his consent for granted, had caught hold of the hatchway coamings with his powerful hands and swung himself down on to the lower deck; reaching up afterwards for the lantern, which the captain handed him, and then disappearing from view as he dived amongst the heterogeneous mass of boxes and casks, and bales of goods, mingled with articles of all sorts, with which the place was crammed.
"Sometimes," I answered, humouring his strange fancy; "but there's only one about, and it seems a deuce of a long way off however, I'll try;" and, with that, I reached my arm up in the direction of the solitary planet, which lay in the vast obscure like a small silver candlestick, with a greenish tinge in its icy sparkling, mirrored far below in the indigo flood of the abysmal sea, while a grey scud came sweeping up, no one quite knew whence, and hung about the glossy face of the silent luminary like the shreds of a wedding veil, scattered by a honey-moon quarrel across the deep spaces far beyond the hairy coamings of the booby-hatch.
"New gang of rigging fore and aft new bulwarks, six feet high, fitted with hammock rail, etcetera, complete deck strengthened by doubling the deck-beams new coamings to hatchways," and so on, and so on, until my imagination had conjured up a picture of the trim little Susanne transmogrified out of recognition, and so stiffened and hampered by her extra deck-beams and new rigging, that we should have reason to deem ourselves fortunate should we ever succeed in screwing six knots out of her on a bowline.
As though they were an invitation to work, shovels were made fast along the coamings of the hatch. The six men took these, and with shouts dropped down upon the grain. And then began a period of Homeric toil. The fireman and the coal-trimmer set the pace, and with a fine contempt for the unhandiness of amateurs did not fail to give a display of their utmost.
The deck forward, as far aft as the foremast, and aft as far forward as the centre of the trunk, or to the sky-light, was above the water, or at least awash; while all the rest of it was covered. In the vicinity of the main-hatch there were several inches of water; enough indeed to leave the upper edge of the coamings submerged by about an inch.
Such was the comprehension and despatch with which he gave his commands that the captain returned from divine worship to find the Maria in profane hands, her immaculate deck littered with straw and sawdust, and covered to the coamings with bottles and cases. This decided the captain, he packed his kit in high dudgeon, and took the first train back to Far Harbor, leaving the yacht to her fate.
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