Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
I thought for an instant that he was directing my attention to the pitiful cries and moans that were being extorted from the unhappy wounded down below as they were flung hither and thither by the furious lurches of the schooner, and I was about to make some sort of reply when a low moaning smote upon my ear, increasing with appalling rapidity to a fierce medley of sounds, in which the savage roars of maddened beasts and the shrieks and wailings of mortally terrified human beings seemed to be about equally mingled; a long line of phosphorescent white appeared upon the northern horizon, showing up with ghastly distinctness against the background of black scowling sky; a fierce scuffle of hot wet wind swept over us and was gone again, leaving a taste of salt upon our lips, and with a deafening howl, as of concentrated fury, the tempest leapt upon us, filling the air with drenching spindrift and scudwater, while, taking the schooner fair abeam, it heeled her over until the water was up nearly level with the coamings of her hatchways.
I was standin' on the coamings of the hatch at the time, peerin' down into the smoke and steam, thinking the fire was nearly out, directing the men what to h'ist out and what to leave, when first thing I knew there came a dull, heavy thump, as if we'd struck a rock amidships, and up puffed a cloud of smoke and sparks that keeled me over on my back and nearly blinded me.
All of them were hard at work, snatching slings of cargo, high up, to the end of long derricks, only, as it seemed, to let them rip down recklessly by the run. The cargo chains groaned in the gins, clinked on coamings, rattled over the side; and the whole ship quivered, with her long gray flanks smoking in wreaths of steam. "No," cried Jukes, "I didn't. What's the good?
As it was, when, a few minutes later, the wind swooped down upon us with the fury of a famished wild beast leaping upon its prey, and with a mad babel of terrifying howls and shrieks that utterly baffles description, the little vessel heeled down beneath its first stroke until her lee rail was buried, and the water rose to the level of her hatchway coamings; and but for the fact that she was at that moment not only forging ahead, but also paying off, there would have been an end of all hands, then and there.
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.
She was a vessel of about forty tons measurement, very long and shallow in proportion to her beam, with full deck forward and aft, and narrow wash-boards on either side connecting the two, the remainder of her being open, the open portion protected from the sea by coamings all round about a foot high.
Two round shot now tore right through the deck, just beneath the larboard coamings of the main hatchway; the little vessel's deck, as she lay over, being altogether exposed to, the enemy's fire, they made her whole frame tremble again, smashing every thing in their way to shivers, and going right out through her bottom on the opposite side, within a dozen streaks of her keel, while the rattling of the clustered grapeshot every now and then made us start, the musketry all the while peppering away like a hail shower.
Seeing that no one was observing me, I seized the rope, and swung myself down till my head disappeared below the coamings of the hatchway. Now at this place space had been left to permit of the lower hold being reached. The rope I grasped was not as long as I thought it was, and suddenly the end slipped through my fingers, and down I fell, hurting myself so much that I was unable to rise.
If I did, the Company would sack me, and the dirty Board of Trade would probably take away my ticket. So you may as well do the kind, and help poor old Cappie Kettle. You see what he's come down to, through no fault of his own. You're young, and you're full to the coamings with confidence. I'm older, and I know that luck may very well get up and hit me, and I'll be wanting a helping hand myself.
Now she was meeting the breast of the on-coming swell, her bows still pinned down by the rush of water in her interior, and now the glistening green wave was upon her, sweeping aft along and athwart her deck, mounting over the coamings of the main hatchway and pouring down the opening in a smooth, hissing, four-sided cataract, snatching up the raft in its embrace and shooting it half a dozen fathoms clear of the doomed craft, and rushing along the deck until even the companion and the skylight were submerged.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking