Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 17, 2025
"The stream has done it, though, sure enough," said Mr Fosset; "that and the gale, for the one has drifted us to the coast and the other pressed us down southwards; and between the two we're just fetched where we are, sir!" "Well," replied the skipper, shrugging his shoulders, "you were right, Fosset, and I was wrong this morning.
"There, Haldane," said Captain Applegarth, pointing over the taffrail at a lot of straggling masses of quasi-looking stringy stuff that came floating on top of the water close by the ship, resembling vegetable refuse discarded from Neptune's kitchen garden. "That's the gulf-weed Mr Fosset was just speaking about to me." "Indeed, sir, I can't say much for its appearance.
As Mr Fosset had been the first to find out in the morning the Gulf Stream that great river that runs a course of some two thousand miles in the middle of the ocean, keeping itself perfectly distinct from the surrounding water through which it flows, from its inception as a current in the Caribbean Sea to its final disposal in the North Atlantic had first carried us in an easterly direction after we had broken-down so utterly; while the strong nor'-westerly gale, aided probably by the Arctic current, running due south from the Polar regions and which disputes the right of way with the Gulf Stream some little distance to the southwards of the great Banks of Newfoundland, had pressed upon the helpless hull of the Star of the North, bearing her away whither they pleased.
"I think my hair will do very well as it is, Fosset," Clarissa said listlessly. "Lor, no, miss; not in that dowdy style. It don't half show it off." Clarissa seated herself before the dressing-table with an air of resignation rather than interest, and the expeditious Fosset began her work.
Mr Fosset, or some of the hands who accompanied him, must have taken down the yarn to the stoke-hold, only just before the unfortunate man met with his terrible accident, though I had no doubt that he must have seen the man-of-war through the port hole of the cabin, which was right opposite his bunk, as she brought up under our stern to speak to us earlier in the afternoon, and the sight of HMS Aurora had, somehow or other, amid the wanderings of his unconscious brain, got mixed up with the remembrance of what he had previously heard concerning the vessel I had seen at sunset the two days prior.
"Hass or no hass, there she wer'," said the old fellow doggedly. "But here comes Mr Fosset, sir. He were on the poop aft when that vessel passed as I speaks on. Ax him what he thinks of her and if she weren't the same full-rigged ship as Master Haldane and all of us seed?" "I will," replied Captain Applegarth promptly; and on the first mate approaching nearer, he hailed him.
These orders were roared out by Mr Fosset in rapid succession, and then in equally rapid sequences came the boatswain's whistle and hail to the men down the hatchway just along the deck.
"Thin, sor, we ran for five hours from that p'int on a west by south course, going between ten and twelve knots; for, though I didn't say it meself, Mister Fosset tould me the wind was freshinin' all the toime, so that we must have travelled about sixty miles, more or less." "So that brings us to this blue mark here?" "Yes, sor, to 42° 28 minutes north, and 51° 12 minutes west."
Here the light was waning and there was a good deal to be done. "I think, Fosset," said the skipper to our worthy first mate, who had been ordering matters forward while the former had come aft, "we had better muster the hands first so as to know who's missing. I'm afraid several of our poor fellows have lost the number of their mess in the fight." "Aye, sir, they have," replied Mr Fosset.
"Hang your gudgeon pin!" cried the skipper irascibly, not perhaps for the moment attaching the importance it demanded to this small but essential part of the engines, uniting the connecting rod of the crank shaft with the piston which he thus irreverently anathematised; and then, struck by the comic aspect of the situation, with the waves breaking over us and the elements in mad turmoil around us, while the fat old chief was blubbering there like a boy about his gudgeon pin as if bewailing some toy that had been taken from him, that he burst out with a roar of laughter, which was so contagious that, in spite of the gloomy outlook and our perilous surroundings, Mr Fosset and all of us on the bridge joined in, even the quartermaster not being able to prevent a grin from stealing over his crusty weatherbeaten face, though the man at the wheel on board ship, when on duty, is technically supposed to be incapable of expressing any emotion beyond such as may be connected with the compass card and the coursing of the ship.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking