Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 18, 2025
"Half a sov. will be about right, sir," replied the tender's skipper, touching his cap at sight of the American Naval uniform. "Good enough," glowed Dave, leaping aboard. "Cast off as quickly as you can, captain, or we'll be in a heap of trouble with our discipline officers." The English skipper was quick to act. He routed out two deckhands, who quickly cast off.
Captain Scraggs had a Jacob's ladder slung over the side and the mate and two deckhands hung over the rail with lanterns, lighting up the surrounding sea feebly for the benefit of the lone adventurer who sat muffled in a great coat in the stern of a small boat rowed by two men.
Suddenly twenty horsemen were seen galloping up through the timber, and as they came nearer the boat they fired on the negro deckhands, against whom they seemed to have a special grudge, and who were engaged in throwing wood on board.
The door shattered then, and the big hulk of Mate Grundy tumbled in, with the two deckhands and the pair from the engine room behind him. Sam let out a yell that sounded like protest, and they headed for us just as gravity came on.
"What!" said Sheriff. "Do you mean to say we can retake her? You don't know what those boys are like. I tell you they were fair demons when we left, and they'll be worse now, because they are certain to have got liquor inside them by this. It's not a bit of use your counting on these deckhands and stokers in the boat. They're not a penn'oth of use, the whole lot of them."
With a taunting laugh, some one turned a key in the lock and before we could move a quick shift of packing cases against the door made escape impossible. Here we were marooned, shanghaied, as it were, within sight if not call of Herndon and our friends. We had run up against professional smugglers, of whom I had vaguely read, disguised as stewards, deckhands, stokers, and other workers.
Soon they were alongside, and a pair of Siwash deckhands lifted Necia aboard, Doret following after, the painter of the Peterborough in his teeth.
Yet, surprisingly, when I hit the mess hall ten feet ahead of the deckhands, most of the scientists were doing all right. Hell, I should have known Pietro, Sanderson and a couple others would be used to no-grav; in astronomical work, you cut your eye teeth on that. They were braced around the cook, who huddled back in a corner, while our purser-steward, Sam, was still singing for help.
Hagan who, Cary heard afterwards, wore the brass-bound cap and blue kit of a mate in the American merchant service was never out of sight for an instant of Dawson or of one of his troupe. He busied himself with a strong pair of marine glasses, and now and then asked innocent questions of the ship's deckhands. He had evidently himself once served as a sailor.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking