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Updated: May 8, 2025
We allowed them an hour and a quarter to get down to the schooner, at the expiration of which time we filled and stood after them. As we rounded the end of the island I slipped up as far as the fore- topmast crosstrees, to see if I could make out anything of what was going on.
From the yell he gave out, as the wardroom steward subsequently detailed, the Reverend Mr Tibbits must have believed His Satanic Majesty was in possession of his cabin; and, on his realising the character of his visitor properly, ere he could clutch hold of Jocko, who was then chattering away in high glee and making hideous faces, his invariable habit when he expected punishment after some evil deed as now, the agile monkey, gripping a portion of the ink-sodden sermon in one paw, and the chaplain's black velvet skull-cap in the other, vanished through the open scuttle by which he had obtained admittance, proceeding up the side as nimbly as one of the foretopmen to the crosstrees aloft, where he put on the skull-cap and very possibly pondered over all that he had done.
The first lieutenant climbed to the upper crosstrees, and after a long look through his telescope returned to deck. “I should say she is certainly one of the schooners that we are in search of, sir, but I doubt whether with this light wind we have much chance of overhauling her.”
“What is she like?” the first lieutenant hailed. “I can only see her top-gallant sails, sir, but she is certainly a square-rigged ship bound south, and her sails have a foreign cut.” The first lieutenant swung his telescope over his shoulder and mounted the rigging. When he came to the top-gallant crosstrees he sat down and gazed into the distance through his glass.
Owing to the cant of the vessel, the masts hung far out over the water, and from my perch on the crosstrees I had nothing below me but the surface of the bay. Hands, who was not so far up, was, in consequence, nearer to the ship, and fell between me and the bulwarks. He rose once to the surface in a lather of foam and blood, and then sank again for good.
He never even in conversation alluded to Britannula, and spoke always of the dockyard at Devonport as though I had been familiar with its every corner. He was very particular about his clothes, and I was told by Lieutenant Crosstrees on the first day that he would resent it as a bitter offence had I come down to dinner without a white cravat.
"You propose to kidnap me," I said. "What would become of your gun were I to kidnap you?" "Lieutenant Crosstrees has sealed orders, and is practically acquainted with the mechanism of the gun. Lieutenant Crosstrees is a very gallant officer. One of us always remains on board while the other is on shore. He would think nothing of blowing me up, so long as he obeyed orders."
At six o'clock day began to break, and with the dawn's early light, the narwhale's electric glow disappeared. At seven o'clock the day was well along, but a very dense morning mist shrank the horizon, and our best spyglasses were unable to pierce it. The outcome: disappointment and anger. I hoisted myself up to the crosstrees of the mizzen sail. Some officers were already perched on the mastheads.
Other records are strewn along the beach; these the tide alone cannot efface the bow of some hapless schooner it may be, wrenched from its hull, and sent whirling shoreward; the shattered mast and crosstrees of a stranded ship beaten to death in the breakers; or some battered capstan carried in the white teeth of the surf-dogs and dropped beyond the froth-line.
Captain Brisac slung the telescope over his shoulder, and, springing into the rigging, made his way aloft to the crosstrees, where the lookout still sat, with one hand grasping the topgallant shrouds, and the other shading his eyes.
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