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Updated: June 22, 2025
And as he looked, her bluff black bows rose upward with an odd climbing movement like a horse stepping up a bank. With a rattle of ropes and blocks she stood still. Barebone went about again and sailed past her. "Sans rancune!" he shouted. But no one heeded him, for they had other matters to attend to. And the dinghy sailed into the veil of the mist toward the land.
"Lower away the dinghy," said the captain, gruffly, to the mate, "and let one of these lazy lubbers get into her with a box of figs. Get into her yourself? I may want you." The mate replied with a stern "Ay, ay, sir," and rose from the gun-carriage on which he had been seated, while the captain went below.
Unless he fell over a drain and broke his silly neck it seemed highly probable that he would arrive at the creek almost as soon as I did. As I ran I prayed fervently in my heart that Mr. Gow had followed my instructions and left the dinghy within easy reach of the water.
'Back a bit! Two good strokes. Ship your scull! Now jump! I clawed at the tossing hull and landed in a heap. Davies followed with the painter, and the dinghy swept astern. 'She's riding beautifully now, said he, when he had secured the painter. 'There'll be no rolling on the flood, and it's nearly low water. I don't think I should have cared, however much she had rolled.
It was fitted with a short, stiff mast and a balance lug-sail. It floated more lightly on the water than the bigger vessel, which was laden with coal and provender and salt for the North Atlantic fishery, and the painter hung loose, while the dinghy, tide-borne, sidled up to stern of its big companion like a kitten following its mother with the uncertain steps of infancy.
Suddenly he seized the oars, and with one movement made the dinghy spin round, head-on to the Great Isabel. But before he began to pull he bent once more over the brown stain on the gunwale. "I know that thing," he muttered to himself, with a sagacious jerk of the head. "That's blood." His stroke was long, vigorous, and steady.
I could discover no one excepting the man at the helm, and the third mate had, I concluded, to take a look-out. I hurried back to get the jar and provisions, and unperceived placed them in the dinghy. I felt about in her, and found two oars and a boat-hook.
Among the boats drawn up on the sand there was a small Norwegian boat, much used as a dinghy, and consequently not drawn as far up on the beach as the others; this was the craft that I was on the lookout for, and by and by I found her, half afloat, and secured by her painter to a small anchor dug well into the sand.
On the following morning, Cupid having called me at daylight, I snatched a hasty breakfast of cocoa and biscuit, and then wended my way to the wharf, where the Krooboy, in light marching order, with three days' rations which he proposed to supplement on the way, if necessary tied up in a gaudy bandana handkerchief, awaited me in the dinghy.
In due time the dinghy passed between the northern and southern bluffs and entered the outer basin, the water being still smooth enough to allow of her keeping within oar's length of the shore; and now they began to realise the majestic and indeed terrific character of the nearly vertical rocky walls which shot sheer out of the water and towered far away above their heads.
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