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It rebounded as the deck sloped sharply in the next wallowing roll, and now this frenzied monster of wood and iron seemed fairly to run amuck. It was inspired with a sinister intelligence, resolved to wreak all the damage possible. The pinnace, the water barrels, the coamings of the cargo hatches, were smashed to fragments as the gun turned this way and that and went plunging in search of victims.
I've been looking for you, sir," said the captain's steward, as I put my head above the coamings. "The captain wishes to see you in his cabin at once, if you please, sir." "Is he there now, Polson? All right, then, I'll go down to him forthwith," and away I went. "Come in!" said the deep, musical voice of the skipper, in answer to my knock. I entered. "Oh! It's you, Ralph. Come in and sit down.
The tarpaulin over the hatchway is pushed on one side, and the space between the coamings is filled with the bull head and broad shoulders of Corporal Van Spitter, who, at last, gains the deck; he looks round him, and apparently is not much pleased with the weather.
It will be remembered that water could now only enter the vessel's hold at the main-hatch, all the other hatchways having their coamings above the element.
But the corporal very adroitly observed, that he stood at the lower step of the fore-ladder, with his head level with the coamings; and had, by this means, overheard the conversation unperceived, and had only walked away when the party broke up.
In one place it was perfectly plain that the powder-keg must have stood, for coamings, bulwarks, skylights, everything had been swept clear off at the time the explosion occurred, while as they reached the saloon entry it was to find only its place, for here the fire had been raging furiously, the poop-deck and the cabins on either side of the saloon being burned completely away.
He suggested, that one half of the cabin table, which was divided in two, should be placed upon the other, so as to raise it up to the coamings of the skylight-hatch; on the upper table to place a pound or two of powder, which, from the ascending principle of explosion, would blow off the skylight and grating without injuring the vessel below.
The old man just reached the other side of the deck, when turning round like a lion at bay, with one foot on the coamings of the hatchway, and his arm raised in the air to command attention, he addressed them in these few words: "My lads, I have fought for my king five-and-thirty years, and have been too long in his service to turn a rebel in my old age."
Just before daylight Jenkins lifted his big bulk out of the bunk, and, taking a key from his pocket, unlocked the forecastle door. He stepped into the passage, and found the hatch loose on the coamings, then came back and quietly wakened them all. "I found this key on the deck near the door first day aboard," he volunteered; "but put it in my pocket instead of the door."
One looks down over the coamings three hundred feet to the despatching-caisson whence voices boom upward. The light below is obscured to a sound of thunder, as our coach rises on its guides. It enlarges rapidly from a postage-stamp to a playing-card; to a punt and last a pontoon. The two clerks, its crew, do not even look up as it comes into place.
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