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Updated: July 1, 2025
The long boat, by far the largest and stoutest of the two, was permanently bolted down to the deck, by iron bars attached to its sides. It was almost as much of a fixture as the vessel's keel. It was filled with pigs, fowls, firewood, and coals. Over this the jolly-boat was capsized without a thole-pin in the gunwales; its bottom bleaching and cracking in the sun.
Before they could resume their paddles they struck again; the stem of the canoe was shattered like an egg-shell and hung only by the gunwales, so that Lawrence, who was steering, had to quit his place. The violence of the stroke drove them to the opposite side of the river, where the bow met with the same fate.
"I don't know what the vagary is, sir, but the permission is assured in advance," laughed Dick. "What are you going to do, anyway, sir?" "I'm afraid the idea will bore you," laughed Dr. Bentley, "but back in the road are the same two automobiles, also two two-horse wagons, loaded to the gunwales, so to speak.
"Make good money writing for the newspapers?" "Enough to live on," Terabon replied, "and, of course, it's living, coming down Old Mississip'!" "You like it travelling in that skiff? Where do you sleep?" "I stretch that canvas between the gunwales in those staples; I put those hoops up, and draw a canvas over the whole length of the boat. I can sleep like a baby in its cradle."
We found Great Fern, my landlord, with Apporo, Broken Plate with the Vagabond, and they had several canoes full of fish. They were delighted at my return, and rubbed noses with me over the gunwales. Getting ashore at the stone steps of Taka-Uka was a task worthy of such boatsmen, in the darkness, the sea beating madly against the cliffs.
They climbed the loftiest mountains and penetrated the most distant streams with their snares. Some came trudging to the forts on foot, with large packs of peltries upon their backs. Others came in their birch canoes, loaded to the gunwales, having set their traps along leagues of the river's coast and of distant streams.
The gunwales of the boat were high; its prow presented inland was lifted; so owing to the water, which they seemed instinctively to shun, the dogs could not well leap into the little craft. But their busy paws hard scraped the prow, as it had been some farmer's door shutting them out from shelter in a winter storm. A clamorous agony of alarm. They did not howl, or whine; they all but spoke.
Cloud now was in the water at a little distance from the shell, which had settled to the gunwales. Clausen, plainly in a state of terror, was kneeling in the sinking boat and crying to the other lad for help. The next moment he was in the water, and his shouts reached the two lads on the beach. Cloud swam toward him, but before he could reach him Clausen had gone from sight.
And while these doughty, desperate spirits fought the fire and smoke with every means at their command, down in the suffocating depths of the ship, braving not only the peril visible and at hand, but the prospect of annihilation in the event that a belated bomb projected its hideous force into the nest of high explosives, while these men fought, the smiling, placid sea was alive with small white craft that bobbed in the gleaming sunlight, life-boats crowded to the gunwales with shuddering, bleak-eyed men, women and children waiting to pick up those who stayed behind, and who inevitably would be driven overboard by the resistless, conquering flames.
Ten or twelve schooners, well manned, confided to intelligent officers, and armed with one heavy gun, and swivels in the gunwales, should sail for Labuan, with assorted cargoes, with the view of both trading and checking piracy.
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