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Updated: June 8, 2025
Caramba! it takes him to polish off the red liquor." "How know you that?" "Saint Christopher! how know I? Did I not just meet him at the main hatch so drunk he fell over the coamings. The sojer on guard set him up against the butt of the foremast to sober off in the night air."
The lieutenant leant over the hatchway, took his battered speaking-trumpet from under his arm, and putting it to his mouth, the deck reverberated with, "Pass the word for Smallbones forward." The dog put himself in a baying attitude, with his fore feet on the coamings of the hatchway, and enforced his master's orders with a deep-toned and measured bow, wow, wow.
Then, without uttering another word, he jumped down alongside of Mr Meldrum on the lower deck; where, catching up a marlinspike that was handy, he rapped vehemently against the coamings of the hatchway, some of the hands having gone to bunk down there since the cargo had been partly removed, on account of the forecastle being quite untenable from the water that had accumulated there, besides which the waves were now washing over it freely.
'Here, let's sample the hold! said the captain, mopping his brow with a back-handed sweep; and the three stalked out of the house, grim and heavy-footed. All hands were turned out; two Kanakas were sent below, another stationed at a purchase; and Davis, axe in hand, took his place beside the coamings. 'Are you going to let the men know? whispered Herrick. 'Damn the men! said Davis.
Each of these hatch-ways, or orifices, had the usual defences of "coamings," strong frame-work around their margins. These coamings rose six or eight inches above the deck, and answered the double purpose of strengthening the vessel, in a part, that without them would be weaker han common, and of preventing any water that might be washing about the decks from running below.
We approached the beach "Oars" the men laid them in. "What sort of nuts be them, Peter Coamings?" said the coxswain to a new hand who had been lately impressed, and was now standing at the bow ready to fend off. Peter broke off one of the branches from the bush nearest him. "Smite my timbers, do the trees here bear shellfish?"
"Holy saints!" he added soothingly, "your worship's head must be ringing yet with the blow it got." To this uncharitable remark I maintained dignified silence, and, flinging my somewhat uncertain limbs over the coamings, went scrambling down, leaving him to his solitary meditations.
All hands were turned out; two Kanakas were sent below, another stationed at a purchase; and Davis, axe in hand, took his place beside the coamings. "Are you going to let the men know?" whispered Herrick. "Damn the men!" said Davis. "It's beyond that. We've got to know ourselves."
Materials were gleaned from different parts of the two vessels, until a reasonably convenient, and a perfectly safe deck was laid over the whole craft, the coamings for the hatches being taken from Daggett's schooner, which had not been broken up in those parts. It is scarcely necessary to say that the ice had early melted from the rocks of the coast.
Greenly was standing on the lower-deck ladder, with his head just even with the coamings of the hatch, as this order reached him, and he repeated it in a voice scarcely less startling. The cloud on the larboard side was driven in all directions, like dust scattered by wind. The ship seemed on fire, and the missiles of forty-one guns flew on their deadly errand, as it might be at a single flash.
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