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She was fully decked, with a sort of monkey-poop aft, about two and a half feet high and twenty feet long, beneath which was her principal cabin. Her bulwarks and rail were very solidly constructed; the former being pierced with rowlock holes for sixteen oars or sweeps of a side, in addition to holes abaft, one on each side of, and near the stern-post, for the short broad-bladed steering paddles.
Give me the lantern;" and the mail-carrier took the light and flashed it over Chillis's face. "I don't know whether he's asleep, or has fainted, or what. He's awful white, an' there's an ugly cut in his shoulder, an' his coat all torn away. Must have hurt himself tryin' to right his boat, I guess. George! the iron on the rowlock must have struck right into the flesh."
I slipped my paddle forward into a rowlock, picked up the other, and, dropping upon the thwart, jerked the cockboat right-about-face to head her back for the schooner. But after a stroke or two I easied and let her drift back stern-foremost while I sat considering. Mr. Rogers had behaved like a trump; yet it seemed mean to deceive the old man; and, moreover, it amounted to striking my colours.
If you have we may be able to manage by hammering it along through the lid of the tin with a rowlock." Frank had a knife, but he set some value on it He did not want to have it reduced to the condition of a coarse toothed saw by being hammered through a tin with a rowlock. He hesitated.
Some accident occurred, possibly the breaking of a rowlock, and they were carried into a rapid. McPherson's men found it necessary to cross their cattle back and forth, but always took the wise precaution to have on some life-preservers. The cork preservers hung in the blacksmith shop, where they could easily be reached at a moment's notice.
But I set the steering oar in the sculling rowlock aft, and did what I could in that way. At least, it saved some of the westward drift, if it was of very little use else. Dalfin curled up in the sun and slept. He had no care for the possible troubles which were before us, knowing naught of the sea; but this calm made the Saxon and myself anxious enough.
Carette's soft hands were not equal to work of this kind, and she saw it. There were but the two oars in the boat. I bade her hand me hers, and she did it instantly, sliding it along to my rowlock and losing but a single stroke. The odds were somewhat against us, but not so much as I feared.
They made a heavy load for him to carry, but what a precious burden it was and how gladly he assumed it! For these were the keys of power. As Constans paddled out into the stream he heard the steady thumping of oars in rowlock. He shoved back into the shadow of the pier just as a great galley filled with men came foaming down the river.
Dexter sat down on the thwart, and took the scull after Bob had contrived to give him a spiteful blow on the back with it before he extricated it from its rowlock. Dexter winced slightly, but he bore the pain without a word, and began rowing as well as a boy does row who handles a scull for the first time in his life.
Again and again the words said themselves, the far-off voices said them, the lapping water took them up and repeated them, the breeze whispered them quickly as it passed, the oar pronounced them as it creaked softly in the crutch rowlock, the stars spelled out the sentences in the sky, the lights of Venice wrote them in the water in broken reflections.
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