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Updated: June 28, 2025
Then a minute or two later came the splash of the anchor and the rumbling rattle of the cable through the hawse-pipe, and the barque was seen to swing to her anchor. "Well, it is perfectly clear that the man who has charge of her has been in here at least once before," remarked Leslie. "Evidently he knows the place quite well.
Without further parley, Price did as he was bidden, and very soon he and Ned were busy knocking out the pin from the shackle in the cable which happened to be nearest the hawse-pipe.
But now at last the time of waiting was over; the sounds and shouts incidental to the taking in of sail, and, still more, the splash of the anchor and the roar of the cable as it rushed through the hawse-pipe told them that the ship had arrived, and with one accord they rolled out of their hammocks the less heavily stricken helping their weaker fellow sufferers and made their way on deck, where the business of stowing the ship's canvas was still in full progress.
Chips snubbed her with the twenty-five fathom shackle just inside the hawse-pipe, the depth of water alongside being a deep five fathoms, and then the men sprang into the rigging and laid out on the bowsprit to furl the topsails and fore topmast staysail.
Wish it would clear up; sinners must be all dead by this time Have had a hard day of it; that boy Ham let go the port anchor, and the whole range of chain, 45 fathoms, went out the hawse-pipe and fetched up with a jerk that carried away the windlass bitts and nearly tore the bows off her; kicked him up on deck in the rain while we mended the windlass; hunted him up to help heave in chain and found he'd sneaked down, got at my jug, and was dead drunk alongside the same; don't see what the Lord wanted to save him for Must be clear of soundings now, so will keep her hove to for a while under short sail, with the wheel lashed down.
I conjectured that she must have arrived at the end of her voyage and entered the Kwara river, a conjecture that was shortly afterward confirmed by the sounds on deck of shouted orders and the bustle and confusion attendant upon the operation of shortening sail, soon followed by the splash of an anchor from the bows and the rumble of the stout hempen cable through the hawse-pipe.
As the cable slowly came in through the hawse-pipe, and the loosed sails fell from the yards, Thorn, through the interpreter, told the Indians that he was about to sail away, and peremptorily directed them to leave the ship. Indeed, the movements of the sailors made his intentions plain. It was too late.
The job occupied them fully a quarter of an hour, for the pin was rusted-in; but at length out it came, and in another minute away went the end of the cable out through the hawse-pipe and into the water with a loud rattle and a splash. "So far, so good," said Ned. "Now, Price, I want you to take the glass and keep a sharp watch upon the shore.
The ship that had been lying tide-rode swung to a heavier puff; and suddenly the slack of the chain cable between the windlass and the hawse-pipe clinked, slipped forward an inch, and rose gently off the deck with a startling suggestion as of unsuspected life that had been lurking stealthily in the iron.
As the chain roared and surged through the hawse-pipe he noticed a number of native women, lusciously large as only those of Polynesia are, in flowing ahu's, flower-crowned, stream out on the deck of the schooner on the beach. Also, and what they did not see, he saw from the galley the squat figure of a man steal for'ard, drop to the sand, and dive into the green screen of bush.
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