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Updated: June 17, 2025


Here was a grassy swamp that was a deep water channel the year before last; there was a fair-way in the process of silting up; there was a mud-bar with twenty-four feet, but steamers drawing twenty-seven feet could scrape over, as the mud was soft. The current round that bend raced at a good eleven knots.

It was just because of that hesitation that a big New York ship, loaded with oil in cases for Japan, and passing through the Billiton passage, sighted one morning a very smart brig being hove-to right in the fair-way and a little to the east of Carimata.

Moreover, it was clear that, snug as was their place of concealment, and unlikely as it was to be discovered save, as in our case, by betrayal, they had left nothing to chance, but had taken every possible precaution to insure their safety, the four craft being moored in pairs, with springs on their cables, stern to stern right across the stream, so that, the fair-way being very narrow, they would have to be fought and taken in succession, a necessity which I at once recognised, and which, to my limited experience, seemed to militate very strongly against our chances of success.

As soon as I got my legs an' wits again I was up on deck, and already the barque was settlin' by the head like a burst crock. She'd crushed her breastbone in on a sunken tramp of a derelict a dismasted water-logged lump, that maybe had been washin' about the Atlantic for twenty year' an' more before her app'inted time came to drift across our fair-way an' settle the hash o' the John S. Hancock.

The captain had run out a hawser and made the end of it fast to a buoy at the far side of the fair-way. A donkey-engine on the steamer's deck was clanking vigorously, hauling in the hawser, swinging the head of the steamer round, a slow but deeply interesting manoeuvre. "Peter Walsh," said Priscilla, "is that you?" "It is, Miss," said Peter, "and it's proud and pleased I am to see you home again."

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