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Updated: May 31, 2025
Soon after Jack had gone down, Jolliffe, who had heard the whole of the altercation, followed him: "My lad," said Jolliffe, "I'm sorry for all this; you should have gone to the mast-head." "I should like to argue that point a little," replied Jack.
While they were thus engaged, a gleam of white appeared on the horizon. "Sail ho!" shouted the sailor in the loud, full tones with which he was wont to announce such an appearance from the mast-head in days gone by. Oh, how earnestly he strained his eyes in the direction of that little speck! It might have been a sail; just as likely it was the wing of a sea-gull or an albatross.
Ha, ha! we go the gait that leaves no dust behind!" "There she blows she blows! she blows! right ahead!" was now the mast-head cry. "Aye, aye!" cried Stubb, "I knew it ye can't escape blow on and split your spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye! blow your trump blister your lungs! Ahab will dam off your blood, as a miller shuts his watergate upon the stream!"
It was just ten o'clock in the forenoon, and the man at the mast-head was in the very act of descending the rigging another man getting ready meanwhile to relieve him when he uttered an excited exclamation which at once attracted all eyes toward him. "Look over there, captain, broad on our weather bow. Do you see that turtle lying there asleep on the water?"
Here we were again, in this romantic spot; a perpendicular hill, twice the height of the ship's mast-head, with a single circuitous path to the top, and long sand beach at its base, with the swell of the whole Pacific breaking high upon it, and our hides ranged in piles on the overhanging summit.
At three, more breakers appeared, extending from the low isles towards the S.E. We now hauled out close to the wind, and, in an hour and a half, were almost on board the breakers, and obliged to tack. From the mast-head they were seen to extend as far as E.S.E., and the smoothness of the sea made it probable that they extended to the north of east, and that we were in a manner surrounded by them.
In a few seconds they were seated alone on the little platform at the top of the fore-mast, just where it is connected with the fore-top-mast, and from this elevated position they gazed in silent delight upon the fairy-like scene. Those who have never stood at the mast-head of a ship at sea in a dead calm cannot comprehend the feeling of intense solitude that fills the mind in such a position.
At the instigation and through the kindness of some yachting friends of mine, I had been introduced to and was elected a member of the Royal Yacht Club; so one fine morning towards the latter end of July we loosed our sails, set them, ran our Club burgee up to the mast-head and the ensign up to the peak, and made a start for Weymouth.
In about half an hour more, the hatches were blown up with a loud noise, and a column of intense and searching flame darted up perpendicularly from the hold, high as the lower mast-head.
Half-an-hour elapsed, during which time the glasses were at every mast-head. Captain Drawlock himself, although not much given to climbing, having probably had enough of it during his long career in the service, was to be seen in the main-top.
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