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There were also smaller craft of every description, with the flags of nearly all nations flying from their mast-heads, either ready to sail, waiting for orders, or preparing to go into dock; while others, with wide-spread canvas, or with steam tugs alongside, were coming up or down the river.
I will always support your authority when you are correct; but I regret that, in this instance, you have necessitated me to weaken it." This was a most severe check to Mr Phillott, who immediately went below, after hailing the mast-heads, and calling down the midshipmen.
Mr Gaunt even went so far as to unpack his own sextant an exceptionally fine instrument and to spend most of the time between luncheon and dinner on the topgallant forecastle, in company with the skipper, measuring the angle between the stranger's mast-heads and the horizon.
Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed and swung over a fathomless sea; and though, when the ship slowly glided close under our stern, we six men in the air came so nigh to each other that we might almost have leaped from the mast-heads of one ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below.
The yard rope was stoppered out on the quarter of the yard, the sheets, clewlines, and buntlines, cast off, and the shift slackened, and then simultaneously from both mast-heads the cry was heard, "Sway, away!" The parrel cut, the yard was quickly topped and unrigged, and then lowered away on deck. The next duty to be performed, was sending down the top-gallant masts.
By this time the increasing light was sufficiently strong to render objects distinct, when near by, and no doubt remained any longer in the mind of Mulford about the two mast-heads being those of the unfortunate Mexican schooner. "Well, of all I have ever seen I've never see'd the like of this afore!" exclaimed Jack.
A death-like stillness reigned from the poop to the cock-pit, the older seamen occasionally glancing through their ports in order to ascertain the relative positions of the two fleets, that they might be ready for the collision. As the English got within musket-shot, the French ran their top-sails to the mast-heads, and their ships gathered fresher way through the water.
Over the waves of the English Channel moved a single ship, such a one as had rarely been seen upon those waters. Its sails were of different bright colors; the vanes at the mast-heads were gilded; the three lions of Normandy were painted here and there; the figure-head was a child with a bent bow, its arrow pointed towards the land of England.
But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at all reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads, especially when they paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms looked more like lifeless masses of rock than anything else.
Whether owing to the almost omniscient look-outs at the mast-heads of the whaleships, now penetrating even through Behring's straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and lockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along all continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff.
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