United States or Palestine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They were exhausted when they stopped beside a belt of sparkling water, and Jim cried out hoarsely and clenched his fist. The channel was wider than he had thought, and near the other bank a punt was running down with the tide. One could hardly see her low, gray hull, but the tanned lugsail cut sharply against the bank, and its slant and the splash of foam at the bows indicated speed.
"Were you ever in a theatre, Duncan?" he said, or rather bawled, to the brown-visaged and black-haired young fellow who had now got the sheet of the lugsail under his foot as well as in the firm grip of his hands. "Oh yes, Sir Keith," said he, as he shook the salt-water away from his short beard. "It was at Greenock. I will be at the theatre, and more than three times or two times."
Howsomedever before long, she struck on a reef, though she hadn't been thrashing away on it three minutes when she drove off, and the water came rushing in like a mill stream. `Out boats, was the cry. Bill here and I, with three others, got into the jolly-boat, but before another soul could spring aboard her she drifted away from the ship. We felt about, and found a lugsail and an oar.
It has got out of the set of the tide and has the wind well abeam, just the thing for that lugsail she carries."
Indeed, there seemed to be very few persons in the boat at all, only two being observed in the stern-sheets, one of whom was steering with an oar, while a third was sitting on one of the forward thwarts attending to the sheet of the lugsail, slacking it out as the wind came aft occasionally, and hauling it in taut again when the sail jibed on the boat's head falling off a point or two through the alteration of her course now and again.
He scrambled up again to his post, and clung there, despite the fierce wind and the clouds of spray. "Keep her close up, sir," said the man who had the sheet of the huge lugsail in both his hands, as he cast a glance out at the darkening sea.
First of all on board he had caught sight of the red flag floating over Castle Dare; and his heart had leaped up at that sign of welcome. Then he could make out the dark figures on the quay, and the hoisting of the lugsail, and the putting off of the boat.
Closer and closer the boat came, until at last its keel touched ground, when, slewing round broadside on, it was left stranded on the beach. "Snakes and alligators!" exclaimed Mr Lathrope, the lugsail swinging aside and enabling him and the others to see into the boat clearly, a thing which had been previously impossible from the boat's coming up end on. "They air a ruin lot, mister!
The sunset had gone away, and the clear northern twilight was fading too, when young Ogilvie, having bade good-bye to Lady Macleod and her niece Janet, got into the broad-beamed boat of the fishermen, accompanied by his friend. There was something of a breeze, and they hoisted a lugsail so that they should run out to meet the steamer.
I shrank from the responsibility and counted the cost of failure certain failure, to judge by her conduct. She began to hoist her lugsail in a dazed, shiftless fashion, while our two boats drifted slowly to leeward. 'Father might not like it, she said, so low and from such tremulous lips that I scarcely caught her words. 'He does not like foreigners much.
Word Of The Day