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Updated: May 12, 2025
We were immediately accosted by the mate, who was lashed down to a ring-bolt close by the bits, with his hands tied at the wrists by sharp cords, so tightly that the blood was spouting from beneath his nails. "We have been surprised by a privateer schooner, sir; the lieutenant of her, and several men, are now in the cabin." "Where are the rest of the crew?"
No time was lost, for the need for doing something grew more and more evident; and with the young men standing by to calm and caress each beautiful steed in turn, running nooses were placed round their fetlocks, and the ropes' ends slipped through ring-bolt and round belaying pin, to be made fast, so that before half an hour had passed the horses were thoroughly secured, and stood staring-eyed and shivering, ready to burst out into a piteous whinnying if the young men attempted to move away.
You have the heels of us in such light weather as the present, and might very easily slip away from and lose sight of us in the darkness; therefore I think that, for the present at all events, in order to avoid any such possibility, you had better take the end of our painter and make it fast to your stern ring-bolt.
He had even, clinging to the same ring-bolt with the skipper, while the south-wester tore overhead and the gallant little vessel lay over wellnigh to her beam-ends, praised with a queer condescension the conduct of the crew. "This is the finest thing in the world," he had shouted, amid the roar of things, "to see men doing their duty! I would not have missed this for a hundred crowns!"
I subsequently learned when I eventually descended from aloft that the surgeon had reported him to be suffering from sunstroke, which was complicated by an injury to the skull sustained by his having struck his head upon a ring-bolt in the deck as he fell.
The first mate proceeded without delay to attach the small hawser which they had used for towing the raft to a ring-bolt, left as if for the purpose on the floating mass; and then the men, backing water on one side, and pulling sharp on the other, soon had the boat on her way back to the land, with the mass of broken timberwork trailing behind her.
Here Tom Bodger was quite at home, and as active as the boat's owner, stumping about inside, and then hopping off one of the thwarts on to the rocks, ready to take mast, yard, oars, and boat-hook up into their places, securing the boat's painter to the big ring-bolt, and then taking one side while Aleck took the other and swinging her right up on to the rocks.
His captors, however, afforded him but scant time for indulgence in surprise or conjecture, conveying him forthwith to the tank chamber, wherein they securely locked him, taking the additional precaution of placing his hands and feet in fetters and attaching him thereby to a ring-bolt, thus rendering it absolutely impossible for him to do the slightest mischief.
"Git on, you brute!" shouted Winklemann, at the same time exerting his great strength as though he meant to urge the light craft out of the water into the air. A few minutes more and they swept round into the space where the hut had once stood. There was nothing left but the bit of rope that had been made fast to the ring-bolt.
Then panting with dread and excitement he found the rest easy; the chain was passed through a ring-bolt in one of the posts at the head of the boat-house, and through this he drew it back slowly and cautiously on account of the rattling it made.
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