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Updated: May 2, 2025
"Captain Alphonse thereupon, seeing the coast clear, sang out for Housi, his second officer, and the boatswain, who he thought were away forward, to come up aft and join us, so that we might all be together, but instead of these men, Cato, my own black servant ran up the poop-ladder and told us in much trepidation that Monsieur Housi, with the boatswain Rigault and one of the French sailors, were imprisoned in the forepeak, while the two white sailors and the steward were hard and fast in the main hold, whither they had descended to get some provisions, the mutineers slipping on the hatchway cover over them, on the `marquis, that devil, giving the signal!"
We sniffed about, hither and thither, and soon found that the smell was stronger as we stooped nearer to the deck, or approached the bulkhead dividing the fore-hold from the forecastle. It was now almost certain that there was a smouldering of something somewhere below; and without more ado the skipper flung off his coat, lifted the hatch of the forepeak, and descended.
So the flag was hoisted, and the men prepared for the end without fear, for sheer physical misery had made them dull and silently reckless. The captain told a young hand to go into the forepeak and see if the water had reached far up: the same hand was ordered to clear away the longboat.
"Whateever on airth ees that noo?" "Matter?" repeated the skipper after him coolly, taking in cause and effect at a glance. "Why, the gas generated by the heated coal in the hold has blown out the forepeak, that's all!
By dint of inquiries he had at length managed to reach the docks, hiding himself away in the forepeak of the Silver Queen, she being the first ship he was able to get on board unperceived, and the hatchway being conveniently open as if on purpose for his accommodation.
The first use of the flag of a neutral country by a ship belonging to one of the belligerents in the Great War occurred on January 31, 1915, when the Cunard liner Orduna carried the American flag at her forepeak in journeying from Liverpool to Queenstown. She again did so on February 1, 1915, when she left the latter port for New York.
With a feeling of carefully suppressed relief, Jack accordingly led the Spaniards forward to the forecastle, down into which the party descended, and where they found three men one of whom was the carpenter awaiting them with lighted lanterns. The forecastle was soon examined, and then the hatch of the forepeak was lifted, and that darksome storehouse very carefully explored.
Then down it went as a man would crash his palms together, bursting out the forepeak like a rotten apple. Thus weakened forward, the loss of the foremast was an imminent certainty. And there were two men in the fore rigging! Captain Ephraim leaned far out from the mainmast; the tug men could see him plainly as he pointed at the tottering mast and then at the deck.
Nor was Smallbones the only one who suffered; two marines and three seamen were successively floored by the corporal, who, blinded with fear, never stopped till he ran his head butt against the lining in the forepeak of the cutter, which, with the timbers of the vessel, brought him up, not all standing, in one sense of the word, for in his mad career his head was dashed so violently against them, that the poor corporal fell down, stunned to insensibility.
"Moses Murphy!" cried the captain. "How did she strike? Bows on, I believe. And she's down by the head now. If any carpenter comes tinkering here, where'll he go first? Down in the forepeak, I suppose! And then, how about all that blood among the chandlery?
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