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Updated: June 3, 2025
"Let it blow!" cried the other, striking his hands together a little wildly; "I pray only for wind!" All the doubts of Nighthead, as to the character of the young stranger who had so unaccountably got possession of the office of Nicholas Nichols, if, indeed, any remained, were now removed. He walked forward among the silent and thoughtful crew with the air of a man whose opinion was settled.
We shall commence our relation of the dialogue at a point where Nighthead saw fit to discontinue his distant inuendos, in order to deal more directly with the subject he had under discussion.
But Nighthead had not formed his resolution by halves, neither had he gone thus far, with any intention to stop short of the completion of his whole design.
Nighthead slowly complied with the former part of this order; and, in a few moments, every thing was arranged to commence the necessary, and, as it would seem, urgent duty of pumping. But no man lifted his hand to the laborious employment.
The mate recoiled a pace, and his lips moved, still he uttered no audible reply. Wilder once more bade him, in a calm and authoritative tone, lay his own hands to the brake. Nighthead then found his voice, in time to make a flat refusal; and, at the next moment, he was felled to the feet of his indignant Commander, by a blow he had neither the address nor the power to resist.
He was called Nighthead; a name that was, in some measure, indicative of a certain misty obscurity that beset his superior member. The qualities of his mind may be appreciated by the few reflections he saw fit to make on the escape of the old mariner whom Wilder had intended to visit with a portion of his indignation.
"If witchcraft can clear the hold of a ship that is already half full of water," said Nighthead, casting another sullen glance towards the attentive Wilder "the sooner it is done the better; for the whole cunning of something more than a bungler in the same will be needed, in order to make the pumps of the 'Royal Caroline' suck!"
"What am I to understand by this hesitation, and by this language?" said Wilder, approaching Nighthead with a firm step, and an eye too proud to quail before the plainest symptoms of insubordination. "Is it you, sir, who should be foremost in exertion at a moment like this, who dare to set an example of disobedience?"
Nighthead muttered at his elbow, in a voice that teemed with a species of superstitious awe. "Let him come on," returned his young Commander bitterly; "the mischief is ready finished to his hands!"
"Men often court their destruction, from ignorance of their own interests. Let him drive on, say I, and pray I! He goes four feet to our one; and now I ask no better favour than that this hurricane may blow until the sun shall rise." Nighthead started, and cast an oblique glance which resembled denunciation, at his companion.
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