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It was February off the Banks, and so thick was the weather that, on the upper decks, one could have driven a sleigh. Inside the smoking-room Austin Ford, as securely sheltered from the blizzard as though he had been sitting in front of a wood fire at his club, ordered hot gin for himself and the ship's doctor. The ship's doctor had gone below on another "hurry call" from the widow.
"The French are up!" roared the man at the wheel, to rouse those below, as well as the watch, who were lying about the decks; but, to the astonishment of the youngsters aloft, as well as of the men on deck, not six, but about twenty Frenchmen, armed with cutlasses, made their appearance.
Not to mention that as we went along the gun decks, we saw the Turkish gunners smoking their pipes beside the heaps of cartridges piled between the guns. A highly oriental sight also, and far from tranquillizing!
Rows of golden lights shone on its decks and from the port-holes, and a drift of music reached him. "Some day soon," she went on, "we'll take a boat like that, and go where? It doesn't matter: to a far strange land. Hills scented with tea flowers. Streets with lacquered houses. Villages with silver bells hung along the eaves. Valleys of primroses under mountains of ice.
The three dead men were given sea burial slipped overboard without other ceremony than the short prayer for each which Jeremy repeated. The gunner who lay in agony in his berth had his wound bound up and was given a sip of brandy. Then the lank New Englander went below to get a meal, while Jeremy sluiced the gun decks with sea water.
There's Bonza's Chair, you must have passed before the fog came on, and could not but have noticed; and the hurling-stones he used to throw for pastime with his brother, they are to be seen still; but all that about his having such long arms that he could snatch the sailors from the decks of ships as they went by, is, in my judgment, but an old wife's tale, and I don't credit it.
The seemingly exhausted men leaped to their feet; the helmsman and our captain lay prostrate by blows dealt by our treacherous foes; the second mate and several of the men were knocked down; and before any of us had time to attempt even any defence of the brig, a set of desperadoes, of all colours and nations, were swarming down on her decks from the rigging of the schooner, while others, who had been concealed in the boat, sprang on board on the lee side.
Finally, when no more can fall in, piece after piece is jambed in by a pricker, and the cask is bunged up. Sometimes not only are all the casks on board filled, but the blubber is stowed away in bulk in the hold, and even between decks; but this good fortune does not often occur.
The calm of a Sabbath morning hung about them, the sun fell upon them like a benediction, and so still was the air that those on the press-boat could hear, from the stripped and naked decks, the voices of the men answering the roll-call in rising monotone, "one, two, three, FOUR; one, two, three, FOUR." The white- clad sailors might have been a chorus of surpliced choir-boys.
He has cleared the decks of all superfluous baggage, and has laid bare a firm basis for a practical, constructive endeavour. He has given us in himself a profound believer in the inward and higher nature of man, and in the existence of the spiritual life.
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