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A large mass of the deck, with part of the gunwale attached to it, lay close beside him, held to the mast by one of the shrouds. He at once swam to this, and found it sufficiently large to sustain his weight, though not large enough to enable him to get quite out of the water.
As for Tier, he was seated quite at his ease; and having slung his glass to one of the shrouds, in a way to admit of its being turned as on a pivot, he had every opportunity for observing accurately, and at his leisure.
They had scarcely passed Durleston when Patsey sprang on to the rail, holding fast by the shrouds, and gazed intently at the narrow entrance of the channel, between the island and the mainland. "There is a boat coming out," she exclaimed. "The coast guard are sure to have launched their boat, as soon as they made us out. They would naturally come out to inquire what a French lugger is doing here."
For five weeks the crisp, shining snow had lain on the frozen ground; in the daytime there was not a cloud to be seen, and at night the sky was strewn with stars. Standing alone in their square courtyards, behind the great frosted trees, the farms seemed dead beneath their snowy shrouds.
The moaning of the wind, the rush of the waves, the silence of the calm, were parts of my own existence; and in the wildest storm, my mind never took a wider tack than just to think what the poor devils on shore would do now. I was a handy lad, however. I could go aloft with any man on board, and never troubled the shrouds in coming down when a rope was within springing distance.
This did bring them from the cabin, and they crowded the poop rail and weather mizzen shrouds as they watched the strange ship. But its course did not lie near, and when it disappeared below the skyline, they returned shivering to the cabin, not one offering to relieve the watch at the mast head.
Smart carriages passed him, the lady-occupants lolling on the back seats and looking in their long, white theatre wraps like corpses in their shrouds; it was fashionable then to look as if one had been exhumed. The schoolmaster, whose thoughts were running in another direction, was sure that the ladies must be bored to death and felt no trace of envy.
However, the two masts, which had been broken and escaped from the shrouds and stays, came up, with their sails, some furled and the others spread. But it was not necessary to wait for the tide to bring up these riches, and Ayrton and Pencroft, jumped into the boat with the intention of towing the pieces of wreck either to the beach or to the islet.
Now all be hushed, and twine your temples with boughs. So speaks he, and shrouds his brows with his mother's myrtle. So Helymus does, so Aletes ripe of years, so the boy Ascanius, and the rest of the people follow.
It was composed of two poles, with cross-pieces and a railing down the sides. I ascertained that this piece of village carpentry was used within the memory of people still living for carrying the dead to the cemetery merely wrapped in their shrouds.
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