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Jemmy perched himself on the fore-end of the booms, and sang as follows: "I suppose that you think 'cause my trousers are tarry, And because that I ties my long hair in a tail, While landsmen are figged out as fine as Lord Harry, With breast-pins and cravats as white as old sail; That I'm a strange creature, a know-nothing ninny, But fit for the planks for to walk in foul weather; That I ha'n't e'er a notion of the worth of a guinea, And that you, Poll, can twist me about as a feather, Lord love you!!
Almost any one must have noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the tail, though it may be similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontal position.
Two days afterwards, on the seventh of December, they anchored at Fort Egmont, in the same island, where they remained four days taking in water and making repairs. This was a joyous time for the landsmen.
He was not wanting either in courage or good sense; but, like his fleet, he had little experience at sea. The French ships, as usual, were better than the British. But the French themselves were a nation of landsmen. They had no great class of seamen to draw upon at will, a fact which made an average French crew inferior to an average British one. This was bad enough.
When all around is calm and peaceful; when the sound of voices comes with muffled sound over the smooth water; when the eye sees nothing save a ghostly white horizon all round close at hand; when almost the only sound that breaks on the ear is the gentle lapping of the sea, or the quiet creak of plank and spar, as the vessel slowly lifts and falls on the gentle swell, and when landsmen perchance feel most secure then it is that the dark cloud of danger lowers most heavily, though perhaps unrecognised, over the mariner, and stirs him to anxious watchfulness, when apparently in profoundest repose.
And so, jump by jump, the sheet was at last hauled taut. I dare say this will seem very much spun out to a seafarer, but landsmen like to hear of the sea and its ways; and as more landsmen than seamen, probably, read the "Atlantic Monthly," I have told them of one genuine sea-song, and its time and place. Then there are pumping-songs. "The dismal sound of the pumps is heard," says Mr.
The texture, unable to bear the heavy strain, gave way; the man slid from the chain-wale into the boat, which was quickly shoved off, and the two terrified landsmen pulled away from the inhospitable ship with almost superhuman vigor, leaving the coat-tail in the hands of the second officer, who waved it as a trophy of victory! Meanwhile Stetson was foaming at the mouth and raving like a madman.
In the year 1672 the French government determined to educate young men of good family from a very early age especially for the sea service. But the English government, instead of following this excellent example, not only continued to distribute high naval commands among landsmen, but selected for such commands landsmen who, even on land, could not safely have been put in any important trust.
It was some time before the irritated parties could be pacified by the more temperate bystanders. Such was the captain's outset with the partners. Nor did the clerks stand much higher in his good graces; indeed, he seems to have regarded all the landsmen on board his ship as a kind of live lumber, continually in the way.
In this awful moment of suspense, which seemingly but preceded the disuniting of soul and body, each of the young men turned a breathless look of horror upon the old hunter, such as landsmen in a terrible gale at sea would turn upon the commander of the vessel; but, save an almost imperceptible quiver of the lips, not a muscle of the now stern countenance of Boone changed.
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