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Updated: June 18, 2025
The weather-beaten old quartermaster on our forecastle applies the match to his brass twelve-pounder, awaking a whole broadside of echoes among the mountains, the big chain rushes swiftly through the hawse-hole, and the ship swings at her anchor in the middle of the picturesque bay. A boat was promptly secured with which to land at this ancient city, founded by Velasquez.
They were bidding farewell to their native land, not again to look upon its shores for many months. They were boys, and they were deeply impressed by the fact. The capstan was manned, and the cable hove up to a short stay. The topsails and top-gallant sails were set; then the anchor was hauled up to the hawse-hole, catted and fished.
"Keep her there!" he said, half turning to the man at the wheel; he changed the indicator from "Full speed" to "Slow ahead"; in a few seconds the anchor chain would have rattled through the hawse-hole when something happened that was incomprehensible, stupefying something utterly remote and strange from the ways of civilized men. The Andromeda quivered under a tremendous buffet.
As the cable enters the hawse-hole, therefore, something must be constantly used, to keep this travelling chain attached to this travelling messenger; something that may be rapidly wound round both, so as to bind them together. The article used is called a selvagee. And what could be better adapted to the purpose?
Nine, eight, seven fathoms were successively reported, and for some minutes the depth remained at six and a half. A mile from the Clara Bell we dropped anchor, the ship trembling from, stem to stern as the huge chain ran through the hawse-hole. We were at the end of a nine days voyage. We were fifteen miles from the mouth of Ghijiga river, the shoals forbidding nearer approach.
With the chart before him at the helm, and with Morris heaving the lead, Captain Scott piloted the Maud to the head of a considerable bay, where he ordered the anchor to be cast loose, and then stopped the screw. "Here we are!" shouted Captain Scott, as the cable slid out through the hawse-hole. "That's so; but where are we?" asked Louis, who had been watching the bottom for the last hour.
Followed the woolly sound of the cable in the hawse-hole; and a grunt and squeal of the windlass; a yaw, a punt, and a kick, and the We're Here gathered herself together to repeat the motions. "Now, ashore," he heard Long Jack saying, "ye've chores, an' ye must do thim in any weather. Here we're well clear of the fleet, an' we've no chores an' that's a blessin'. Good night, all."
The cable of the anchor has been run out, and its service is no longer at the hawse-hole. I repeat that some one has been using our vessel!" "But if the convicts had used her, they would have pillaged her, or rather gone off with her." "Gone off! where to to Tabor Island?" replied Pencroft. "Do you think, they would risk themselves in a boat of such small tonnage?"
But some mad, audacious whisper was at my brain: and at 10.30, the 2nd September, immediately opposite the Cross Wall Custom House, the Boreal's anchor-chain, after a voyage of three years, two months, and fourteen days, ran thundering, thundering, through the starboard hawse-hole.
The detective spoke to him in French, but the steward could not understand a word he said. Christy inquired if any of the ward-room officers spoke the polite language, for his friend might sometimes wish to converse in his own tongue. "I don't believe they do, for they all got into the ward room through the hawse-hole," replied the steward, laughing at the very idea.
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