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Updated: June 19, 2025
"The fore topgallant halliard was not made fast to the cleat, and when it ran out, it jerked her from it," replied the commander. "It ought not to have been loose, and there is a bit of discipline for some jack-tar." The ship went along as before; and when the passengers turned out the next morning Manila was in sight, and not five miles distant.
"There, lass!" cried a broad-shouldered jack-tar, giving the fluke of the anchor a hearty slap with his hand after the housing was completed "there, lass, take a good nap now, for we sha'n't ask you to kiss the mud again for many a long day to come!" And so it was. That anchor did not "kiss the mud" for many long days afterwards; and when at last it did, it was for the last time!
Among these fishermen were two young men tall and strong who seemed to despise shelter, and stood at the very edge of the raging sea. One was a black-bearded man of the Coastguard. The other, as his dress betokened, was a Jack-tar of the Royal Navy.
Bow-legged men ran the gravest of risks in this respect, and the goose of many a tailor was effectually cooked because of the damning fact, which no protestations of innocence of the sea could mitigate, that long confinement to the board had warped his legs into a fatal resemblance to those of a typical Jack-tar.
Splendid jack-tar as he was, no one could be more thoroughly disagreeable than Isaac Dent when things, as he expressed it, "went agin' him." He did not care for his long wait in Granger's dreary, fireless room; and he cared still less for the remark with which Granger announced his return. "It's all no go, Dent, my man.
In the course of time, however, we found the benefit of the change in every way; and the grumblers were silenced, because in spite of their wise shakings of the head, we filled the ship with oil as full as she could hold, much sooner than we had expected. Shoregoing people have but little notion of the ease with which the heart of a jack-tar is made to rejoice when he is out on a long voyage.
"The Prussians, your majesty," answered the Jack-tar that was to be, without apparently realizing that he had said anything wrong or impolite, and merely giving a frank utterance to the sentiment in which he, like all his countrymen in Bavaria, had been brought up.
I turned and observed that the shout was uttered by a broad rough-looking jack-tar, a man of about two or three and thirty, who had been sitting all the forenoon on an old cask smoking his pipe and basking in the sun. "Hallo!" said he again. "Well," said I.
"No long-trousered imitation of a sailor-boy, either, please," said he, pointing, disfavour in his eye, at the presentment of a curly-headed infant of five in a Jack-tar outfit of white flannel topped by an expensive straw hat. "I see you're not going to trust me," murmured Mrs. Lessing, as a slim-waisted, trailing-black-gowned saleswoman approached.
And hardly had the carriage turned the corner and rattled into the high road with this inexplicable pair, than the whistle broke forth prolonged, and low, and tremulous; and the groom, already so far relieved, vented the rest of his surprise in one simple English word, friendly to the mouth of Jack-tar and the sooty pitman, and hurried to spread the news round the servants' hall of Naseby House.
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