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Updated: June 8, 2025
"You say that everything is ready to start the fires, Sampson?" said Corny, as soon as he had a chance to speak to the ship-keeper. "Everything is ready, Christy, and I have only to touch the match to the shavings to make a beginning," replied Sampson. "Is there any news about my appointment in the engine-room, Christy?"
He saw the captain put his hand on her shoulder, and was preparing himself with a certain zest for what might follow, when the "old man" seemed to recollect himself, and came striding down all the length of the saloon. At this move the ship-keeper promptly dodged out of sight, as you may believe, and heard the captain slam the inner door of the passage.
The ship-keeper having given him up all the keys and having been chased forward with the admonition to mind his own business and not to chatter about what did not concern him, Mr. Franklin went under the poop.
"In a word, Sampson, an attempt will be made to-night to capture the Bellevite, and you have been getting up steam for the conspirators," said Christy, when the ship-keeper had finished his narrative of the visit of the trio to the ship. "Is that so?" exclaimed Sampson, opening his mouth and his eyes very wide at the same time.
He had come on board breathless with the hurried winding up of his shore affairs, accompanied by two horrible nightbirds, escorted by a dock policeman on the make, received by an asthmatic shadow of a ship-keeper, warned not to make a noise in the darkness of the passage because the captain and his wife were already on board. That in itself was already somewhat unusual.
The old ship-keeper, sitting alone smoking on the hatchway in the evening before unloading begins, will affront one with his presence. Where are the men, rough, honest, coarse, or even bad, that used to sit there so often in the twilight of the dog-watch? There is a strange yearning to see them again.
On the evening before the barque sailed, the three seamen, Nilsson, Foucault, and Parratt, proceeded to the Danish ship with a supply of whisky, made the ship-keeper royally drunk, and locked him up in an empty berth. Meanwhile Wo-li made a secret communication to the mandarin to the effect that certain stolen property, believed to be his, had been secreted in the hold of the empty ship.
He saw the captain put his hand on her shoulder, and was preparing himself with a certain zest for what might follow, when the "old man" seemed to recollect himself, and came striding down all the length of the saloon. At this move the ship-keeper promptly dodged out of sight, as you may believe, and heard the captain slam the inner door of the passage.
That was attended to by a snuffy and mop-headed, inconceivably dirty, and weirdly toothless Dutch ship-keeper, who could hardly speak three words of English, but who must have had some considerable knowledge of the language, since he managed invariably to interpret in the contrary sense everything that was said to him.
"Forward, sir," replied Sampson, as he led the way. The captain kept some distance behind the ship-keeper, and took Corny by the arm to detain him.
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