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He rolled on his side, stuck all his claws out and drew them in again luxuriously, purring meanwhile like a miniature sawmill. When Cap'n Abe came back the girl asked: "Wasn't your customer a young man I saw on the porch as I came in?" "Yep. Lawford Tapp. Said he forgot some matches and a length o' ropeyarn. I reckon you went to that young man's head.
Bob sprang forward, and seized the end of the long painter which was neatly coiled-up and stopped with a ropeyarn or two. Whipping open his knife he quickly severed the stops, and was just arranging the coil in his hand when Captain Staunton cried sharply "Heave with a will, Bob. There she goes!"
On, on we flew, and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to the blast; ducked and dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan. Sideways leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a wire; the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes.
"I don't care a ropeyarn whether I'm allowed to speak to the gal or not; but I thinks that O'Gorman and me, seein' that we're to be the mates of this here hooker, ought to berth aft, and to take our meals in the cabin; and I'm for havin' our rights."
The seas broke heavily over her until she entered the mouth of the harbour. A crowd of their fellow-townsmen from other vessels had come on to the pier with the object of rendering any assistance they could, and by their goodness and skill she was moored without the necessity of letting go the anchors or even breaking a ropeyarn.
With a sufficient commander no stout ship is ever lost, so long as she has a foot of water beneath her false keel, or a ropeyarn left to turn to account." "And yet the Dane had all these." "All but the water. The best craft that was ever launched, is of less use than a single camel, if laid high and dry on the sands of Africa. These poor wretches truly!
So far the Water Lily had weathered the gale scatheless; there was not so much as a ropeyarn out of its place or carried away; and as there seemed to be no greater danger than there had been through the night, and as I had taken a good look round when aloft without seeing anything, we both went below to enjoy the comfort of the cabin, for on deck everything was cold, wet, and dismal in the extreme.
"I thought I recognised the voice: I know him intimately well." "Will he stand Vattel?" anxiously demanded Mr. Truck. "Nay, as for that, I must refer you to himself." "You appear to have suffered in the gale," resumed Captain Ducie, whose smile was very visible, as he thus addressed them like an old acquaintance. "We fared better ourselves, for I believe we did not part a ropeyarn."
It was with a mighty sigh of relief that I presently resigned the wheel to Saunders and went forward to greet and welcome the rescued men; for, by the skin of our teeth we had saved them all in the very nick of time, and that, too, without parting so much as a ropeyarn.
"Be jabers he is, ivery inch av him from his blissid ould pigtail, tied up with a siezin' of ropeyarn, down to his rum wooden brogues an' all, the craythur!" replied Tim, stretching out his big hairy fist to the other, who had advanced on seeing him and stopped just abreast, his saffron-coloured face puckered up into a sort of wrinkled smile of pleasure at meeting an old shipmate like the boatswain, who said in his hearty way: "Hallo, ye ould son av a gun!
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