Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
As they were running close to the headland east of the bay, Peter Blood returned to the Colonel, who, under guard and panic-stricken, had dejectedly resumed his seat on the coamings of the main batch. "Can ye swim, Colonel?" Colonel Bishop looked up. His great face was yellow and seemed in that moment of a preternatural flabbiness; his beady eyes were beadier than ever.
There was a faint reply, evidently from a distance, and then a rush was heard, and the two men came up blinded, choking, and coughing violently. "Where's Mr Gregory?" cried the captain. "Here!" was the reply, and the first-mate's head appeared above the coamings of the hatchway. "Well?"
The gunner followed, and in less than a minute the whole crew were over the shattered coamings of the hatchway and on deck, ready to encounter the enemy.
I knew he was right, and could not but feel ashamed of my irritability, for both he and Tepi had been watching the boat most carefully, and I there and then decided what to do, my ill-temper vanishing when I saw Mrs. Krause and Niâbon bailing out the water which had come over the hatch coamings into their cabin.
The whole of the lee side of the deck was submerged; the water was pouring in tons down the open hatchways, the lee coamings of which were already under water, and the watch below could be seen ineffectually endeavouring to make their way up on deck through these openings, the rush of water down which irresistibly drove them back again at each attempt.
With the setting of the sun there came a still further freshening of the breeze, laying the barque down upon her side until her lee covering-board was buried, and the water, spouting up through the scuppers, was washing the deck on the lee-side almost up to the coamings of the main-hatchway.
The rumpus continued for nearly ten minutes, and then quite suddenly ceased; and as it did so the cook flung his legs over the coamings of the fore-scuttle, and disappeared down the hatchway. Some five minutes or so later, O'Gorman appeared on deck, ghastly white, and with his cheek laid open in a gash that extended very nearly from his left ear to the corresponding corner of his mouth.
The whole contents of the hatchway had burst into flame, and the ruddy tongues of fire were now darting through the hatchway, as through a chimney, to a height of fully twenty feet above the deck. The coamings were on fire, the pitch was beginning to bubble and boil out of the seams of the deck planking, and the planks themselves were already uncomfortably hot to stand upon.
One hot summer afternoon, when the Saucy Sally was taking in cargo and the Skipper was ashore, Mr. Topper, seated on the coamings of the hatchway, abandoned himself to the melancholy pleasures of Haydn's "Surprise," the tune being wrung out of a tarnished German-silver flute.
The heat got suffocating and the slant of masts and deck made matters worse, because the men must hold the derricks back with guys while the heavy goods cleared the coamings of the hatch. Much judgment was needed to drop them safely in the boats.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking