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We ran away from her as if she had been anchored." "What sort of a looking craft was she?" exclaimed Marcy, starting up in his chair. "Well, she was a fore-and-after and had figures painted on her sails to make us believe that she was a pilot boat," answered Jack, somewhat surprised at his brother's earnestness. "But she was about four times too big for a pilot boat.
I used to sit there at the window, reading, but the lines would run together, and I'd forget what 'twas all about, and gather no sense, and the image of the little fore-and-after, the "Feather," raked in between the leaves, and at last I had to put all that aside; and then I sat stitching, stitching, but got into a sad habit of looking up and looking out each time I drew the thread.
With the cook raving in his bunk the forecastle would have been a perfect hell, and there wasn't a spare cabin on board. There never is on a fore-and-after. So I put him into mine, and he was more quiet there, and at last fell into a sort of stupor as if he were going to die. I don't know what became of him, for we put him ashore alive and left him in the hospital.
It isn't so, unless he is a mere animated stomach; the many think they have come into their own as they go to sea, the vibration of the triple-screws singing along the keel.... They pass an iceberg or a derelict, some contour of tropical shore, a fishing fleet, or an old fore-and-after, and the steamer is a stifling modern metropolis after that galley and stoke-hole its slums.
It's all child's play on a fore-and-after compared with reefing topsails in anything like weather, but the gear of a schooner sometimes does unhandy things that you don't expect, and those everlasting long halliards get foul of everything if they get adrift. I remember thinking how unhandy that particular job was.
The beauty of a fore-and-after is that she practically works herself, all that is needed being three or four hands on the forecastle to trim over the jib and fore sheets as she comes round. It was simply child's play compared with the complicated manoeuvres that attend the working of a full-rigged ship, and Henderson laughed aloud in his delight at the simplicity of it.
"Who's going in a coach when he can be run over in one of our luggers? You say the word, and I have got a friend with a little fore-and-after as only wants him and a hand and mebbe me to give a pull at a sheet. He'd run you over in no time." "By all means, then, let's go," said Uncle Paul, to Rodd's great satisfaction. "Well, yes," growled the skipper. "But who's a-going with you?"
"Oh, well," he observed, "I don't know how you'll get on with her; she's a queer one to look at, and I expect she'll want some learnin' before you'll be able to handle her properly. Have you had any experience in a fore-and-after?" "Only in boats," I replied.
She made no attempt to pass her antagonist, but headed up the estuary. The captain rubbed his hands. "She's making for shoal water, Mr. Wharton, and we shall have to cut her out, sir. She's a footy little brig, but I should have thought a fore-and-after would have been more handy." "It was a mutiny, sir." "Ah, indeed!" "Yes, sir, I heard of it at Manilla: a bad business, sir.
She was only a fore-and-after, carrying no standing topsail, even, and we named her after two of the river girls, who were flyers, in their way; at least, I thought so then; though a man by sailing a packet comes to alter his notions about men and things, or, for that matter, about women and things, too.
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