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Updated: May 2, 2025
We thought of getting into one of the boats, the last boat to go on the forward part of the starboard side, but there seemed to be such a crowd around I thought it unwise to make any attempt to get into it. He and I stood by the davits of one of the boats that had left. I did not notice anybody that I knew except Mr. Lindley, whom I had also just met that evening.
The men were gathered about the wheel aft, and were out of ear-shot. Mrs. Sloane had dropped into a steamer-chair, and was lying back with closed eyes. "Yes, Mrs. Johns." "Where have you put them?" I pointed to where the jolly-boat, on the port side of the ship, swung on its davits. "And the mate, Mr. Singleton?" "He is in the forward house." "What did you do with the the weapon?"
He did not bring those uncouth vermiculations to a stop until he was well back in the shelter of a rusty capstan, cut off from the light by a lifeboat swinging on its davits. As he clambered to his feet again he saw this light suddenly go out and then reappear. As it did so he could make out a patrol-boat, gray and low-bodied, slinking forward through the gloom.
We could see the government whale-boat towing astern, and knew that Arnold and Robinson must be on board; but the ship's boats still hung at the davits, and no preparations were apparently being made to come ashore. The Russian governor had made us promise, when we left the settlement, that if the reported vessel turned out a reality and not a delusion, we would fire three more guns.
"She's high out of the water, and that makes her look bigger," observed Jim. "I have seen some like her brought up at Spithead, and to my mind she's a South Sea whaler, outward bound. That's the reason she looks so high. Yes, I am right, for I can make out her boats hoisted up at the davits."
Here, as he had anticipated, the crowd was small, since most people thought that it would not be possible to get this boat down safely to the water; or if their powers of reflection were gone, instinct told them so. That skilful seaman, the second officer, and his appointed crew, were already at work lowering the cutter from the davits. "Now," he said, "women and children first."
It rained quite hard for a half-hour about noon and then ceased just in time for them to set off to the Catspaw again. It was decided that the Follow Me's tender was to be left with the schooner, in case of necessity, and Joe acknowledged that he felt a bit easier in his mind when it had been hoisted, not without difficulty, to one of the davits.
The decks had been swept clean of every movable thing, including the longboat and the jolly-boat that had been stowed on the main hatch; and both quarter-boats had also vanished from the davits, leaving only fragments of their stem and stern-posts hanging to the tackle blocks to show what had happened to them.
There was no sign of any floating wreckage alongside her, from which Leslie was led to surmise that her masts must have been cut away; a circumstance that, in its turn, pointed to the conclusion that she had been hove over on her beam-ends probably by a sudden squall and had refused to right again. But what had become of the crew? A glance at the craft's davits answered that question.
We scrambled aboard gladly enough, hoisted the boat to the davits, and at once started back for our rendezvous at the Elliot group, where we arrived without adventure shortly after sunrise on the following morning.
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