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Updated: May 14, 2025
"To to Dock, sir," I stammered. "Let me go, please: I'm in a hurry." My captor held me out at arm's length and eyed me. He was a sailor, and rigged out in his best shore-going clothes tarpaulin hat, blue coat and waistcoat, and a broad leathern belt to hold up his duck trousers, on which my sooty head had left its mark. He grinned at me good-naturedly. I saw that he had been drinking.
However, it would never do to mope; so, rising silently and picking a way through human lumber on the floor, I went out and down to the water's edge, where "shore-going" clothes, as we sailors call them, were slipped off, and I plunged into the sea for a swim. It was a welcome dip, for I needed the plunge physically and intellectually, but it came to an abrupt conclusion.
It was not till an hour later that he went to his cabin to shed his shore-going gear for ordinary apparel; and as soon as this was done he reached down the register from the book-shelf over his bunk to look up the Stormberg. "H'm," he growled, standing over the book at his desk. "Built in 1889 on the Clyde. I know her style. Five thousand tons, and touch the steam steering-gear if you dare!
News was bawled down to them that the ship was indeed a man-of-war, that she was close up, that she was lowering a boat; and still they sought in vain. By what accident they missed the iron box with the money and accounts is hard to fancy, but they did. And the vital documents were found at last in the pocket of Trent's shore-going coat, where he had left them when last he came on board.
"Moran," said Wilbur, "I'm going ashore into the station here; there's a telephone line there; see the wires? I can't so much as turn my hand over before I have some shore-going clothes. What do you suppose they would do to me if I appeared on Kearney Street in this outfit?
Late in the same afternoon the New Zealand ships put to sea, under orders to steam individually at slow speed to meet off Alexandria at dawn. There was not a great deal of settled sleep that night, for all men were busy packing kit-bags and putting in order shore-going clothes.
He was girded to ships' masts and funnels of steamers, like a forester to a great oak, scraping and painting; he was lying out on yards, furling sails that tried to beat him off; he was dimly discernible up in a world of giant cobwebs, reefing and splicing; he was faintly audible down in holds, stowing and unshipping cargo; he was winding round and round at capstans melodious, monotonous, and drunk; he was of a diabolical aspect, with coaling for the Antipodes; he was washing decks barefoot, with the breast of his red shirt open to the blast, though it was sharper than the knife in his leathern girdle; he was looking over bulwarks, all eyes and hair; he was standing by at the shoot of the Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks in trade of several butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured down into the ice-house; he was coming aboard of other vessels, with his kit in a tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the very last moment of his shore-going existence.
"Very good, I have seen many a brave man die in my time, and I hope to see a few more, although, I grant you, the death in the heat of conflict, and fighting for our country, is a vastly different thing to some shore-going mode of leaving the world." "Yes," said Henry, as if pursuing his own meditations, rather than listening to the admiral.
It is true that many of the shore-going young gentlemen who strutted about in silk doublets, feathers in their hats, and jewelled swords by their sides, fought bravely enough.
By the time that the excitement attendant upon the safe return of the Captain and his escort had begun to simmer down a little, night had fallen, and those who were not on duty began to think of retiring to rest, for the day had been a long and rather trying one to all hands, and especially so to those who had been of the shore-going party.
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