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This accident happened also to another boat, so that, even by overloading those that remained, it would now be impossible to accommodate every one. In this dilemma, the captain at once gave orders to heave overboard all the spare spars and the hencoops, together with enough of cordage for the construction of a raft.
And they called me Butch for no reason at all except that perhaps my great-great-grandfather was a butcher. We were a fine gang of youngsters, all about thirteen years, wise in boys' deviltry. What we didn't know about killing cats, breaking window-panes in barns, stealing coal from freight-cars, and borrowing eggs from neighboring hencoops without consent of the hens, wasn't worth the knowing.
As for the spirit of the peasantry, in making a gallant defence behind hedgerows and through plate-racks and hencoops, highly as I think of their bravery, I do not know any nation in Europe so likely to be struck with panic as the English; and this from their total unacquaintance with the science of war.
The object that had attracted Leslie's notice proved to be one of the hencoops belonging to the Golden Fleece, that had broken adrift when the ship went down, and returned to the surface.
They went away with the looking-glass, highly delighted, and left six birds and much of the fruit, and all went away; and in the afternoon they came again, but bringing a quantity of those birds, at which our men rejoiced very much, and filled hencoops with them, because they gave them and were satisfied with anything that was given them, especially white stuffs; so that the seamen cut their shirts in pieces, with which they bought so many of these birds that they killed and dried them in the sun, and they kept very well.
What a noise they made! The clatter was so great that all the birds flew away to other climes, and even the clouds fled from the sky. At the call of Mother Mitchel all the farmers' wives were set to work; they rushed to the hencoops to collect the seven thousand fresh eggs that Mother Mitchel wanted for her great edifice. Deep was the emotion of the fowls.
"Now I'll be a bear, and jump at you as you go by," said Poppy, when they were tired of playing steam-engine with the old winnowing machine. So she got up on a beam; and Nelly, with a peck measure on her head for a hat, and a stick for a gun, went bear-hunting, and banged away at the swallows, the barrels, and the hencoops, till the bear was ready to eat her.
It occurred to Leslie that, since the hencoops had broken adrift from the sinking ship, other wreckage might have done the same; and he accordingly proceeded to search the surface of the ocean with his gaze, in quest of floating objects.
At four A.M. I was relieved by Thomson, who at daylight apprized me that the maintopmast was sprung, and that the gale was increasing. Scarcely had I gone on deck, when a tremendous sea struck us a little "abaft the beam," carrying every thing before it, and washing overboard hencoops, cables, water-casks, and indeed every movable article on the deck.
Billy went forward with a chain and a strap to where a kennel had been made for Bruff, by turning a flour barrel on its side and wedging it between two hencoops, and here, greatly to the vexation of the chickens, who lived in dread of Jack's long hairy arm and clever fingers, which were always stretching through the bars to pull their feathers, the monkey had to use Billy's words "just turned in."
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