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Updated: June 27, 2025
The cries of the leadsmen began to rise out of the distance, and were gruffly repeated by the word-passers on the hurricane deck. 'M-a-r-k three!... M-a-r-k three!... Quarter-less three!... Half twain!... Quarter twain!... M-a-r-k twain!... Quarter-less Mr. Bixby pulled two bell-ropes, and was answered by faint jinglings far below in the engine room, and our speed slackened.
Fort Barrancas had evidently opened fire in response to the rocket, which had no doubt been sent up as a signal to notify the garrison that a vessel was going out or coming in, and that her movements were not regular. The first shot was followed by others, and a shot dropped into the water near the Teaser. "Let the leadsmen sound, Beeks," said Christy.
'I don't want to find fault with your leadsmen, but that's a good deal of water for Plum Point, it seems to me. There was an approving nod all around as this quiet snub dropped on the boaster and 'settled' him. And so they went on talk-talk-talking.
An island in process of formation, covered at high water, separates the two anchorages. We had to go back, &c., and ended the day's work by getting through a very tight place in a most masterly manner; leadsmen sounding at the bow and stern, as well as at the two paddles, and the 'Lee' and 'Cruiser' stationed as pivots at the edges of the shoal.
George tapped the big bell three times, two leadsmen sprang to their posts, and in a moment their weird cries rose on the night air and were caught up and repeated by two men on the upper deck: "No-o bottom!" "De-e-p four!" "Half three!" "Quarter three!" "Mark under wa-a-ter three!" "Half twain!" "Quarter twain! "
More than one grave watchman has sworn to me that on drizzly, dismal nights, he has glanced fearfully down that forgotten river as he passed the head of the island, and seen the faint glow of the specter steamer's lights drifting through the distant gloom, and heard the muffled cough of her 'scape-pipes and the plaintive cry of her leadsmen.
The steam began to whistle through the gauge-cocks. The cries of the leadsmen went on and it is a weird sound, always, in the night. Every pilot in the lot was watching now, with fixed eyes, and talking under his breath. Nobody was calm and easy but Mr. Bixby. Out of the murmur of half-audible talk, one caught a coherent sentence now and then such as 'There; she's over the first reef all right!
'The leads tell me that. I rather thought I had the advantage of him there. 'Yes, but suppose the leads lie? The bank would tell you so, and then you'd stir those leadsmen up a bit. There was a ten-foot bank here last trip, and there is only a six-foot bank now. What does that signify? 'That the river is four feet higher than it was last trip. 'Very good. Is the river rising or falling?
The cries of the leadsmen began to rise out of the distance, and were gruffly repeated by the word-passers on the hurricane deck. 'M-a-r-k three!.... M-a-r-k three!.... Quarter-less three! .... Half twain! .... Quarter twain! .... M-a-r-k twain! .... Quarter-less Mr. Bixby pulled two bell-ropes, and was answered by faint jinglings far below in the engine room, and our speed slackened.
The moment that daylight dawned, Jim, whose nerves were by this time torn to fiddle-strings by frequent necessary stoppages during the night, put his vessel at full speed again, and, still with two leadsmen sounding the whole time, the Angamos swept along the narrow waters, finally emerging at the Argentine end of the Straits.
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