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The sun was at the rim of hills between us and the open sea, and the sky was aflame in a gorgeous tropical sunset. Harris, the mate, was busy on the fore-deck battening down hatches and clearing up the litter of ropes and slings. The Kut Sang was plainly enough short-handed for the passage, for there were but half a dozen Chinese sailors in sight.
With a voice that was less a cry than a startled grunt, Mr Markham pitched backwards off the fore-deck into the sea.
Ulf's ship was also pretty close to the Dragon, and he wished greatly to board it, but was so hard beset by the ship of Nicolas Skialdvarsson that he could not do so for a long time. Here Kettle Flatnose did prodigies of valour. He stood on the high fore-deck with his favourite weapon, the hook, and therewith pulled a great number of men off the enemy's deck into the sea.
Meanwhile, our passage was very favourable; my adventures were told by Fagan to his brother officers, who treated me with kindness; and my victory over the big chairman procured me respect from my comrades of the fore-deck.
But the fore-deck was so swept by the seas that nobody could keep his footing there, except the lookout men, who were holding watch at the beak of the vessel, not far from the cat-head.
Then said he: "Sturla the Icelander, will you tell stories?" "As you will," said Sturla. So he told them the story of Huld, better and fuller than any one there had ever heard it told before. Then many men pushed forward to the fore-deck, wanting to hear as clearly as might be, and there was a great crowd. The queen asked: "What is that crowd on deck there?"
Now go, and let me think yet more.” Simonides lingered. He was not sure Themistocles was master of himself. But the admiral beckoned peremptorily, the poet’s hand was on the cabin door, when a loud knock sounded on the other side. The prōreus, commander of the fore-deck and Ameinas’s chief lieutenant, entered and saluted swiftly. “Your business?” questioned the admiral, sharply.
The poor man was hauled over the bows and stretched on the fore-deck, where he lay groaning while they brought the boat alongside the quay's edge. By this time a small crowd had gathered, and was being pressed back from the brink and exhorted by a belated policeman.
The clanking and rattling of the donkey engines were plainly audible across the water. The engineman was probably sweating too. Captain Wilson, standing erect in the full blaze of the sun on the steamer's fore-deck, cannot possibly have been cool. Mr. Donovan sighed with satisfaction.
No sooner was it off the ship than she once more resumed her former buoyancy of motion, lifting easily over the seas, with only an occasional sprinkling of spray upon the forecastle, instead of ploughing furiously through them and drowning the whole of the fore-deck, as she had been doing during her endeavour to work out to windward of Point du Raz; so great, indeed, was the improvement in our condition generally that, although it was still blowing very heavily, we all felt as though we had suddenly passed into fine weather after our recent buffeting.
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