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Updated: June 25, 2025
I am now sorry I let the Jack tars here persuade me not to go in the little barque; but they talked so much of the heat and damp of such tiny cabins in an iron vessel, that I gave her up, though I liked the idea of a good tossing in such a tiny cockboat.
A cheer for the brave little cockboat arose from the English. "David and his pebble!" exclaimed Master Jeremy Sparrow. "Now for Goliath's twenty-pounders!" But no flame and thunder issued from the guns aboard the stranger. Instead, from her deck there came to us what sounded mightily like a roar of laughter.
I slipped my paddle forward into a rowlock, picked up the other, and, dropping upon the thwart, jerked the cockboat right-about-face to head her back for the schooner. But after a stroke or two I easied and let her drift back stern-foremost while I sat considering. Mr. Rogers had behaved like a trump; yet it seemed mean to deceive the old man; and, moreover, it amounted to striking my colours.
As we drew close the cockboat leading I glanced over my shoulder and spied Plinny leaning against the bulwarks by the starboard quarter, in the attitude of one gently enjoying the sunset scene; but at the sight of my torn shirt all her composure left her, and she came running to the accommodation ladder, where she met me with a string of agitated questions.
Before the cockboat reached the point he had fallen, first to his knee, then prone upon the sand.
"In for a lamb, in for a sheep," thought I, and began to back the cockboat towards the corner where the dinghy lay. As I did so it occurred to me to wonder why the Captain and Mr. Rogers had been so dilatory. They must have started a full hour ahead of me; they had left the schooner at a brisk stroke, whereas I had merely floated up with the tide.
"To send two old women to sea in a cockboat," Asgill replied. And he laughed anew and loudly. But this time there was no gaiety in his laugh. If the Colonel had not performed the feat in question, in how different a state things might have been at this moment!
"Miss Plinlimmon, ma'am, has given me a shock, and I won't deny it," answered the Captain, recovering himself. Miss Belcher continued to nod like a china mandarin. "I don't wonder," she agreed. "For my part, you might have knocked me down with a feather. The fellow came down the creek, cool as you please, and pulling a nice easy stroke, in Harry's cockboat.
It may chance it is a full day in the harbour; he will then have seen all manner of ships, from men-of-war and deep-sea packets to the labour vessels of the German firm and the cockboat island schooner; and if he be of an arithmetical turn, he may calculate that there are more whites afloat in Apia bay than whites ashore in the whole Archipelago.
"No," I said; "but I was with him in the East Indian Islands." "Then you tell him to stop about the West Indy Islands. He may get some birds there, but he won't if he goes to the coast yonder. You tell him I say so." "What's the use?" I said. "Uncle has made his plans." "Oh, yes, and he thinks he's going to do wonders with that cranky cockboat."
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