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While these negotiations were going on, however, another ship, the Mercury, under command of Captain Galvin, had made its appearance in the bay. The Mercury was bound from Buenos Ayres to Valparaiso with cannon, but just before doubling Cape Horn she had sprung a leak, and was compelled to put in at the Falkland Islands to make the necessary repairs.
She did not reef as you and I do by sane reefing points, but in a gimcrack fashion with a long lace, so that it took half an hour to take in sail. Did she leak? No, I think not. It is a pious opinion. I think she was tight under the composition, but above that and between wind and water she positively showed daylight. She was a basket. Glory be to God that such a boat should swim at all!
"She's started something below, what with all that lifting and dancing and tricing up." Wilbur ran back to the quarterdeck. "This is a bad fix," he said to Moran. "Those chaps are coming aboard again. They're on to something, and, of course, at just this moment she begins to leak." "They are after that ambergris," said Moran between her teeth. "Smelled it, of course the swine!" "Ambergris?"
He stood gnawing at his lips, eying her uncertainly, half angrily, half hungrily. And then he shrugged his shoulders. "Listen!" he said. "I've got some one else, too! And I know now where the leak that's queered every one of our games and put the White Moll wise to every one of our plans beforehand has come from. I guess you'll believe me now, won't you?
They were a welcome sight, for the little craft had been so strained by the struggle against the storm, that she had sprung a leak, and it was with difficulty that the sailors kept the water in the hold from gaining on them.
Such a craft, after a little hard usage, would leak as badly as most cedar canoes, and would be totally unfit for the trials of a long cruise. The diagram given of the Centennial Republic will enable the reader of aquatic proclivities to understand the general principles upon which these boats are built.
'It must leak out of the inside of me, wailed Bobby Baxter when sent to the pump for the third time one morning; but he went more or less cheerfully, for his was the splendid honour of weaving a frame for Lisa's picture, and he was not the man to grudge an inch or two of skin if thereby he might gain a glorious immortality.
"True, Mr Millons; we shall have to run to the nearest port on the African coast to refit; luckily we are not very far from it. Meanwhile, tell Mr Markham to try the well; it is possible that we may have sprung a leak in all this straining, and see that the wreck of the foretopmast is cleared away. I shall go below and consult the chart; if any change in the weather takes place, call me at once."
Meantime, as the adventurers were making their way slowly towards the Watergate, they struck upon a hidden obstruction in the river and the deeply laden vessel sprang a leak. In a few minutes those inside were sitting up to their knees in water a circumstance which scarcely improved their already sufficiently dismal condition.
Great was the anxiety to learn the effect of what had been done, and quite as great the disappointment, when it was found that there was still a serious leak that admitted too much water to think of going to sea until it was stopped. A little head-work, however, and that on the part of Roswell, speedily gave a direction to the search that was immediately set on foot.
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