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Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called them ringbolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast.
With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeg lances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of wild wood lands. There are generally forty-two teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down, but undecayed; nor filled after our artificial fashion.
"But we can't reach the shore, look at those waves." A tremendous sea rolling after them broke over the stern of the ship, tore everything before it, stove in the steerage, carried away the rudder, shivered the wheel to pieces and tore up the very ringbolts of the deck, carrying the men who stood on the deck forward and sweeping them overboard.
This was a very stout wooden framework built up from two heavy beams joined by cross-pieces, and all so well bolted together that it was very solid and firm. In this the boat rested snugly and was held fast by rope lashings; and the cradle itself resting on the lower hatch and projecting on each side of it was lashed to the hatch ringbolts so as to be safe against shifting in a heavy sea.
Thirsting for vengeance, the Spanish sailors had spread-eagled several of the negroes to ringbolts in the deck and were shaving the living flesh from them with razor-edged boarding lances. Captain Delano thereupon disarmed these brutes and locked them up in their turn, taking possession of the ship until he could restore order.
Then the heavy eleven-inch gun of the Essex jumped up from the deck, took a leap backwards, almost jerking the great iron ringbolts from the sides of the ship, coming down with a jar which made her quiver from stem to stern, sending a shell, smoking and hissing, down stream, towards the Rebel gunboat, and striking it amidships, throwing the planks into the water. "Hurrah!
Her bulwarks were gone fore and aft, and one saw her bare deck low-lying like a raft and swept clean of boats, spars, houses of everything except the ringbolts and the heads of the pumps. I had one dismal glimpse of it as I braced myself up to receive upon my breast the last man to leave her, the captain, who literally let himself fall into my arms.
I said innocently, as I stood up in the bows of the wherry and hung on by a boathook to one of the ringbolts in the side of the old three-decker that towered up above our heads, waiting to help in a couple of gentlemen who came hurrying down the accommodation ladder to take passage with us.
"So we were at it for about half an hour, when our guns became so hot from quick firing, that they bounced up to the beams overhead, tearing away their ringbolts, and snapping their breechings like rope-yarns. By this time we were almost as much unrigged as if we had been two days paying off in Portsmouth harbour.
"So we were at it for about half-an-hour, when our guns became so hot from quick firing, that they bounced up to the beams overhead, tearing away their ringbolts, and snapping the breechings like rope yarns. By this time we were almost as much unrigged as if we had been two days paying off in Portsmouth harbour.
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