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Updated: June 13, 2025
"And so you really believe you could wash these Malay chaps white?" "I do, sir. I'd holystone 'em till they was." "It would be a long job, Dick," said Bob laughing. "But I say, don't you wish you had gone with the hunting-party?"
Betty didn't invite you aboard." "Oh, that's all right!" said Betty, good-naturedly. "I'm glad they're here now let them stay. I'm so relieved to find they aren't horrid tramps. Besides, the motor may not mote and we'd need help We will make them work their passage." "Aye, aye, sir!" exclaimed Frank, pulling his front hair, sailor-fashion. "Shall we holystone the decks, or scrub the lee scuppers?
For an instant the two vessels swung head and stern alongside of each other. In his official report, Capt. Marchand naïvely remarks: "'A few of the enemy were seen through their ports, who were using most opprobrious language. Our marines opened on them with muskets: even a spittoon and a holystone were thrown at them from our deck, which drove them away.
I therefore eagerly watched for, and hailed with delight, the first faint pallid brightening of the eastern sky that heralded the dawn; for with daylight there would at least be the ship's toilet to make the decks to holystone and scrub, brasswork and guns to clean and polish, the paintwork to wash, sheets and braces to flemish-coil, and mayhap something to see, as well as the possibility that with the rising of the sun we might get a small slant of wind to push us a few miles nearer to the region where the trade wind was merrily blowing.
The decks were as white as holystone could make them, the sails and the bell shone in the morning sun like gold, and there was not a speck to be seen on the cabin skylight any more than upon either of the three brass guns, a long and two shorts, as Billy Waters, who was gunner and gunner's mate all in one, used to call them.
You see, the deck's as white as a holystone will make it, and your boots is black, and black and white never did agree. It's beginning to get a bit fresh, sir, and if I was you I'd striddle a bit, so as to take a bit better hold of the deck with your footsies. I shouldn't like to see you come down hard."
He settled himself against the mast, gave a final polish to his hook with holystone, and using the hook every now and then to punctuate his narrative, began. "Let me see, 'twas a matter o' three years ago. I was bo'sun on the Swallow, a spanker she was, chartered by the Company, London to Calcutta.
On deck, the men began to holystone the planks, polish up the brasswork, and make everything shipshape for port. The middies are at work here on the poop, each "with a sharp knife and a clear conscience," cutting away pieces of tarry rope. New ratlines are being fastened up across the shrouds. The standing rigging is re-tarred and shines black.
"It's the climate." "It may be. But it's my belief I'm irritable because I do not know my own mind. I hate the stuffy stateroom, the food, the captain." "The captain?" "Yes. Nothing seems to disturb his conceit. To-night we sleep on deck, the starboard side. At five o'clock we have to get up and go inside again so they can holystone the deck. And I am always soundest asleep at that time.
Gudule's belfry towers; and at the top of it entered a little chamber in the roof, where one square unglazed hole that served for light looked out upon the canal, with all its crowded craft, from the dainty schooner yacht, fresh as gilding and holystone could make her, that was running for pleasure to the Scheldt, to the rude, clumsy coal barge, black as night, that bore the rough diamonds of Belgium to the snow-buried roofs of Christiania and Stromstad.
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