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Updated: May 10, 2025
"Run forward quick quick call up all hands," he cried. Then raising the trumpet, "Half a dozen of you men loose the cannon." Leaping to the spar deck, I ran to do his bidding, for the junk now was bearing swiftly down upon us. On my way to the forecastle-hatch I noted the stacked pikes and loaded muskets by the mainmast, and picked out the most likely cover from which to fire on possible boarders.
The whole shore and back land thereabout was deserted; the edge of the city was four miles distant. Hoang returned to the forecastle-hatch and went below, groping under his bunk in his ditty-box. "Well, what is it?" exclaimed Moran a moment later, as the beach-comber entered the cabin, and shut the door behind him. Hoang did not answer; but she did not need to repeat the question.
"There's no fear till the storm's over, Mr Frewen," I said, laughing, and then, with the two gentlemen keeping perfectly silent, we went forward again, and had nearly reached the forecastle-hatch, when, sounding very feeble and strange, there was the report of a pistol, and we hurried forward to hear shouts of rage coming from below the hatch, and the blows of an axe being used with such effect, that before long whoever wielded it must make a way through.
"I say, cook," I half whispered, "you were a good deal on deck?" "No, sir, not much, I was busy here. The crew ate a deal." "But you knew about Mr Walters being shut up in the cable-tier?" The cook glanced uneasily toward the forecastle-hatch and shook his head. "They can't hear you," I said, "and even if they could they can't get at you."
Seeing how thoroughly upset I was, the mate told Mr Frewen to speak to me as soon as he was gone; for he was about to join the men on the watch by the forecastle-hatch, so as to be ready to take action as soon as possible after the drug had acted. "How soon will it be?" he asked Mr Frewen. "I cannot tell you.
I was quickest, and ran out of the saloon, but there was no one nearer than the forecastle-hatch in one direction, and on the other as I ran up the ladder there was the man at the wheel, one of the men we had secured, while the other was seated on the bulwark talking to him and smoking. "What could it have been?"
Although we did not approach them near enough to learn more about them, it seemed probable that they were conveying some great mandarin or chief on affairs of state. "That man Blodgett is telling stories of one kind or another," Mr. Cledd remarked one afternoon, after watching a little group that had gathered by the forecastle-hatch during the first dog-watch.
It was still too wet forward to permit of taking off the forecastle-hatch, but communication between cabin and forecastle could be effected by means of a sliding door in the bulkhead; so Francois was sent below with instructions to prepare a thorough good breakfast, with plenty of hot coffee which, let me say, I have found infinitely more comforting and refreshing than spirits, after long exposure to wet or cold, or both combined.
On reaching the deck, along which I had to guide myself by holding on by the side, and catching at rope and belaying-pin, I found that the sea had risen higher, and the wind was rushing through the rigging with almost hurricane force. But I made my way to the forecastle-hatch, where Mr Preddle was still on guard, as I could see by the light of the swaying lantern, and Mr Brymer was with him.
Thus saying, he went forward to serve a topgallant-stay that was stretched across the forecastle-hatch from the cat-heads, and had just been spliced by the men, followed by an old-fashioned sea-urchin, a miniature of the tar, with a mallet in his hand.
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