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Updated: June 18, 2025
So pleasurable had been their voyage, that it was with a feeling akin to regret, that they heard the rumbling chains of the anchor, rush through the hawse-hole, as their vessel took her station in the bay.
Dan yanked out an inch hose and set a cabin boy to sluicing the deck where they stood, sending up dense clouds of enveloping steam. A broad tongue of blue flame curled out of the port hawse-hole, licked along the half-protruding anchor, rose above the rail, and then burst into a puff of red fire which floated away in the wind.
It dripped mud and a sailor was quite ridiculously playing a hose on it. It ascended and swayed and its shank went smoothly into the hawse-hole. There were guns swinging skyward. Some were still covered by canvas hoods. The hoods vanished before the cruiser swung out of the porthole's line of vision. A destroyer leaped across the space they could see, full speed ahead.
"My hand does it so naturally, and one's hand is never mistaken!" "Then can the convicts have been on board?" asked Herbert. "I know nothing about that," answered Pencroft, "but what is certain, is that some one has weighed the Bonadventure's anchor and dropped it again! And look here, here is another proof! The cable of the anchor has been run out, and its service is no longer at the hawse-hole.
“Yes, I know you are ready to do anything, lad, and it is not your fault that you are not in harness; but, in the first place, I found it hard to spare you, and in the next, I wanted you to stick to your books as long as you could. I grant there are many officers even in His Majesty’s service who are as rough as if they had come in through the hawse-hole, but it tells against them.
Anyhow, the horseshoe was firmly nailed to the mast in the Fram's saloon, and there it still hangs. When on board, we promptly set to work to get up the anchor. The Bolinder motor hummed, and the heavy cable rattled in through the hawse-hole.
They were praying to us their evil spirits, for this wrong had been wrought them by our advent, if not by ourselves. I cannot dwell upon the scene. I could not describe it. I would not if I could. The steamer was still in her berth; her head was pointed seawards. Loud orders rang over the water. The roar of the chain running out through the hawse-hole and the heavy splash could not be mistaken.
At the same moment, Tim Rooney giving the tumbler a smart stroke with a hammer which he had picked up from off the windlass, the cathead stopper was at once released and the anchor fell from the bows into the water with a great heavy splash, the chain cable jiggle-joggling along the deck after it, and rushing madly through the hawse-hole with a roaring, rattling noise like that of thunder! "Oh!"
During the course of the gale nearly the whole length of the hempen cable, of 120 fathoms, was veered out, besides the chain-moorings, and, for its preservation, the cable was carefully "served", or wattled, with pieces of canvas round the windlass, and with leather well greased in the hawse-hole, where the chafing was most violent.
As the extent of the calamity to the enemy was unknown, the young commander began to have some painful doubts in regard to the immediate future. He had given the order to slip the cable, and he could hear the rattle of the chain as it passed out through the hawse-hole. It was evident enough to him that he had to run the gantlet of the party on board of the Vampire in descending the river.
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