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An' with that anchor safe on the fo'castle head, I, for one, can't see no sense in raisin' it." "You tarnation jackass!" sighed Gibney. "You forget who we are. Do you s'pose the steamer Yankee Prince can lay on the beach all night with both anchors out, an' then be got ready to tow off in three shakes of a lamb's tail? It takes noise to get up two anchors so I'm makin' all the noise I can.
Pinky hops up on the bowsprit, and runs along to the fo'castle head, an' then I seen she was real. The little cuss! She'd swung herself up into the martingale, an' there she'd squatted all the afternoon until we was out o' sight o' land. Of course, she got a ducking every few minutes, but what's a duckin' to them kind o' people?
They were glad to see him back to the "fo'castle," but those who knew were sorry his mission had been unsuccessful. "They all know me and wishes me well," remarked the sailor to Richard. "It's something to be proud of around on this here globe forty-five years and not an enemy in the world." "How long were you a sailor?" "Almost thirty years.
I could see by my glass a whole wealth of armament in the foretop of her short mast forward; and high points in her fo'castle marked the spot where many other machine guns were ready for action.
The two ran for-ward: Moran swung herself into the fo'castle hatch, and without using the ladder dropped to the deck below. In an instant her voice came up the hatch: "The bunks are empty they're gone abandoned us." She came up the ladder again. "Look," said Wilbur, as she regained the deck. "The dory's gone; they've taken it. It was our only boat; we can't get ashore."
One Neils Halvorsen, a solemn Swede with a placid, bovine disposition, constituted the fo'castle hands, while Bart McGuffey, a wastrel of the Gibney type but slower-witted, reigned supreme in the engine room. Also his case resembled that of Mr. Gibney in that McGuffey's job on the Maggie was the first he had had in six months and he treasured it accordingly.
Every pair of eyes that met his from the fo'castle, were eyes of smoldering hatred and fear, and though he assumed scornful unconsciousness of this attitude, he knew that his security was no greater than that of the lion-tamer, whose beasts have begun to go bad. He must appear to invite attack, and upon its first intimation of outbreak, he must punish, and punish memorably.
Ay, a grand thing I thought it would be, too, to go riding round the world on a well-washed deck, with plenty of food and grog, and maybe, by-and-by, to be first mate, and lord it from fo'castle bunk to stern-rail. "You did not know, did you, who was the coast-guardsman that stumbled as he came on us that night? It looked a stupid thing to do that, and let the lantern fall.
"How so, Resolution?" "When eyes look sweetness why scowl? When lips woo kisses wherefore take a blow instead? When comfort and all manner o' delights be offered why choose misery forrard and the bloody rogues o' her fo'castle? For 'tis there as you be going, mate aye, verily!"
It is but wood and iron and hemp and canvas that is doing all this, with some thirty poor, broken-down, dissipated wretches, who, being fit for nothing else, of course are fit for the fo'castle of a Liverpool Liner.
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