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Updated: June 3, 2025
And since the lingua franca of the sea, the tongue which has meaning for Swedish carpenters, Finn sail-makers, and Greek fo'c's'le hands alike, is not German, orders aboard the Villingen were given and understood in English. "A hand com' aft here!" It was the mate's voice from the poop, robust and peremptory.
"McClosky, the second mate, was not a fellow who stood any nonsense, an' th' men weren't long before they was out o' th' fo'c's'le, grumblin' an' swearin' as only men who've lost their watch below can. They just stayed long enough t' shove th' unopened bottles o' stout well out o' sight underneath th' mattresses o' their bunks an' then they was up on deck working like niggers.
"We aren't got enough to eat in the fo'c's'le, sir, an' we wants our proper 'lowance o' meat, instead of a lot of rotten kickshaw marmalade!" "Wh-a-at what the dickens d'ye mean?" roared out "Old Jock," touched on his tenderest point, the word "marmalade" to him having the same effect as a red rag on a bull.
So it was the next night, and so the night after that. When three successive days had passed without any manifestation the keen edge of the business became a little blunted and we declared that an end had been made. Ally Bazan returned to his bunk in the fo'c's'le on the fourth night, and the rest of us slept the hours through unconcernedly.
The momentarily quiet sea, too, had got up again, and was now covered with huge broken waves raised aloft in pyramids one moment, and the next scooped out into yawning valleys, into which the vessel plunged, with a shock that made her timbers vibrate with the sledge-hammer thud of the bows meeting the billows full butt, the concussion causing columns of spray to be thrown up that came in over the cathead, drenching the fo'c's'le and pouring in a cascade into the waist, whence the broken water, washing aft along the deck, forming a lake on the lee-side, where the scuppers were level with the sea, from the ship's heeling over.
The pirates fired at him in the water, but the bullets missed him. He regained his ship, and the fight went on. While the old man was cheering the wounded to their guns, "another jar of powder took fire forward," blowing the gun's crews which were on the fo'c's'le into the sea.
Take one of them when she is hiking along at 20 knots, rolling from 45 to 50 degrees, and just about filling the whale-boat swinging to the skid deck davits as she rolls! See one dive and take a sea over her fo'c's'le head and smash in her chart-house bulkhead maybe! Their outer skin is only 3/16 of an inch thick. See that thin skin give to the sea like a lace fan to a breeze!
These were on deck between the logs, which were crashing about. We couldn't work the pumps, as there was seven feet of water in there on deck. The second mate spoke to the captain that it would be best to start the steam pump. The smokestack and the rest of the steam fittings were under the fo'c's'le head. It took a long time to get them out, and then the steam pump would not work.
The thrashing will pay your footing for coming aboard without leave. Jorrocks, you can cut these scamps down now, and find them something to do in the fo'c's'le make 'em polish the ring-bolts if there's nothing else on hand!"
An' aboard we went, the cook an' me pullin' the punt, an' she steerin'; an' the cook he crowed an' cackled all the way, like a half-witted rooster; but the maid didn't even cluck, for she was too wonderful solemn t' do anything but look at the moon. "'Skipper, said the cook, when we got in the fo'c's'le, 'here she is.
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