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Updated: May 15, 2025
Ordinarily speaking, the men would have taken no notice; but their nerves were fretted to fiddle-strings. They jumped up, and three or four clattered into the barrack-room only to find Simmons kneeling by his box. "Owl It's you, is it?" they said and laughed foolishly. "We thought 'twas" Simmons rose slowly. If the accident had so shaken his fellows, what would not the reality do?
"She's a clipper and no mistake when she has the wind abeam: bears her canvas well, too, for a little un!" he added, with another glance aloft, where the sails could be seen distended to their utmost extent and tugging at the bolt-ropes, while the topgallant-masts were bent almost into a curve with the strain upon them and the stays aft were stretched as tight as fiddle-strings.
The ship was now only under her close-reefed main-topsail and reefed foresail, all the rest of her canvas having been taken off her by degrees; still, she laboured so greatly, and got such a list to leeward with the topmasts bent like fishing rods under the strain, while the weather shrouds were as taut as fiddle-strings, and those on the port side hung limp and loose through the stretching of the rigging that the skipper saw she would not stand driving any more.
"Death is nothing," said one young officer just down from the Somme fields for a week's rest-cure for jangled nerves. "I don't care a damn for death; but it's the waiting for it, the devilishness of its uncertainty, the sight of one's pals blown to bits about one, and the animal fear under shell-fire, that break one's pluck... My nerves are like fiddle-strings."
"She's as sweet as locus' blooms," Mrs. Chadron declared, unstintingly. "But she's kind of distant; nothing friendly and warm-hearted like your little Nola, mom." "She's a little cool to strangers, but when she knows a body she comes out." Banjo nodded, drawing little whispers of melody from his fiddle-strings by fingering them against the neck.
The moment that daylight dawned, Jim, whose nerves were by this time torn to fiddle-strings by frequent necessary stoppages during the night, put his vessel at full speed again, and, still with two leadsmen sounding the whole time, the Angamos swept along the narrow waters, finally emerging at the Argentine end of the Straits.
"And won't they come out and tackle the naygurs that have been bothering them on the one side, while we pitch into them on the other! We'll double them up and destroy them entoirely." "I doubt if we go at Matammeh before we get reinforcements," said Macintosh. "And what will we want with reinforcements?" asked Grady; "haven't we bate the inimy into fiddle-strings already?"
You know the sort of thing." Desmond nodded, and took a seat on the edge of the table. "Are you often given that way?" he asked with seeming unconcern. "Now and again." "Ever been really bad with it?" "Pretty bad. Why d'you ask?" "Because from the looks of you, I should say it was wearing your nerves to fiddle-strings. Ever take anything for it?"
"So your conscience is not at ease? My son, you are as strong as a Flemish work horse. I limped to mass for the next fortnight, and my gown was in fiddle-strings, you may send me another. As for the rest, we need new altar hangings. Now, come, come, come. Tell us what has happened." And there it ended. One makes enemies in strange ways in this world and friends in stranger.
Jim tucked the old fiddle under one round boy-cheek and played in the hot attic, with wasps buzzing around him; and he spent his pennies for catgut, and he learned to mend fiddle-strings; and finally came a proud Wednesday afternoon when there were visitors in Madame's school, and he stood on the platform, with Miss Acton playing an accompaniment on the baby grand piano, and he managed a feeble but true tune on his violin.
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