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Updated: May 11, 2025
And, ere I fainted into the blackness, on my side, staring, my pain gone so beyond endurance that it had achieved its own anaesthesia, I glimpsed, dream-like and distant, the sharply silhouetted poop-rail, dark forms that cut and thrust and smote, and, beyond, the mizzen-mast brightly lighted by our illuminators. Well, the mutineers failed to take the poop.
The captain ran his eye over the boats and counted the men to see that all had embarked safely. "Don't bring her too close, Hank!" he cried warningly, as he saw the old whaler edge the boat toward him, and stepping on the poop-rail, he jumped into the sea.
Another lantern swung from the mainmast, and yet another from the poop-rail for the Basha's convenience. Overhead the clustering stars glittered in a cloudless sky of deepest purple. The wind had fallen entirely, and the world was wrapped in stillness broken only by the faint rustling break of waves upon the beach at the cove's end.
"Very good, sir," replied the commander; and, as soon as the Frenchmen had hoisted their answering pennant to show that our signal had been taken in and understood, he turned to the poop-rail and sang out, "Bosun's mate, pipe the watch to trim sails!"
What he would have done, however, in case of my non-compliance with his imperative request remains a mystery to the present day; for, as at that moment, the commander, who had been surveying the maintop from the poop-rail above us, hearing my funny gentleman's voice, which he had raised in speaking to me, called out to him "Below there," he cried "Mr Larkyns!"
Pike, who, leaning near, on the poop-rail, was divided between gazing sourly at Nancy pottering on the main deck and sourly at Possum, who, on the bridge, crouched with terror each time the crojack flapped emptily above him. The mate turned his head and favoured the sky picture with a solemn stare. "Oh, I don't know," he growled.
An instant later the cressets on the poop-rail were extinguished, as was the lantern swinging from the rail, and even the lamp in the poop-house which was invaded by one of the Basha's officers for that purpose. The lantern hanging from the mast alone was spared against emergencies; but it was taken down, placed upon the deck, and muffled.
When my eye lighted upon him he was grasping the poop-rail with his right hand and shaking his left fist at us. Just then our eyes met, when, to my surprise and disgust, he turned to a marine near him and pointed at me, at the same time apparently giving the man an order.
He had changed his clothes, and he had shaved! Now how could one treat a hero such as he save as I treated him when I remarked off-handedly that he must have had a lively watch? "My," he answered, equally off-handedly, "I did get a prime soaking." That was all. He had had no time to see me at the poop-rail.
"The evening's closing in, too," said the "first luff," screwing his eyeglass more tightly into the corner of his eye and bending his lanky body over the poop-rail to see if everything was all right on the deck below, after taking a hurried squint aloft. "I shall shorten sail at once. Bosun's mate!" You should have heard him roar out this hail.
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