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Updated: May 16, 2025
In a moment more he had shaken them off; and before I could intervene, he had seized a belaying pin in either hand, and was hazing them up and down the deck. "Mutiny, would you?" he shrilled. "You poor swabs! Forgot who was your captain, did ye? Well, it's Captain Ezra Selover, and you can lay to that! It would need about eight fathom of stuff like you to tie me down."
He must know how to gentle her about, as one instance of a myriad, and to fill her on the other tack without deadening her way or allowing her to fall off too far. The deepwater sailor of to-day needs know none of these things. And he doesn't. He pulls and hauls as he is ordered, swabs decks, washes paint, and chips iron-rust. He knows nothing, and cares less.
He was conscious that the rear rank had turned about, and of a vision of "Swabs" standing like a man shooting rabbits in a cover, with his rifle at his shoulder, waiting for a chance of a clear shot. Turning again to his front, he noticed the fellow on his right working frantically at his lever, and sobbing with rage and excitement over a jammed cartridge-case.
Whenever he thought it safe to do so he aired these opinions and, as there were a few of what Captain Hunniwell called "yellow-backed swabs" in Orham or its neighborhood, he occasionally had sympathetic listeners. Phineas, it is only fair to say, had never heretofore shown any marked interest in labor except to get as much of it for as little money as possible.
Trelawney not told you of the buccaneers? He was one of them." "So?" cried Silver. "In my house! Ben, run and help Harry. One of those swabs, was he? Was that you drinking with him, Morgan? Step up here." The man whom he called Morgan an old, gray-haired, mahogany-faced sailor came forward pretty sheepishly, rolling his quid.
Mister Fitz was holding a lantern, and Mister Lynch had his hands free for business. He met Blackie's egress with a careless jab of his fist that up-ended the unfortunate stiff, and the injunction, "Hearty, now, you swabs! Lay aft!" I quickly sidestepped out of the second mate's range, in case he should aim a blow at me, and started to obey the command to lay aft.
"What the mischief are ye standin' star-gazin' there for, ye lazy swabs, chatterin' an' grinnin' away loike a parcel av monkeys?" he cried, waving his arms about as if he were going to knock some of them down. "If I had my way wid ye, an' had got ye aboord a man-o'-war along o' me, it's `four bag' I'd give ivery man Jack o' ye.
All the equipment, in fact, necessary for an expedition of a dozen men for six months. Not a drop of liquor. Perhaps that was why the girl was more overjoyed by the details of the find than the mariners. Bompard openly expressed his mind. "Not a bottle of wine or a drop of rum, swabs."
Skipper Simms was dancing about like a madman. His bellowed oaths rolled up the cliffs like thunder. Presently Ward caught a glimpse of the men at the top of the cliff above him. "There they are!" he cried. Skipper Simms looked up. "The swabs!" he shrieked. "A-stealin' of our grub, an' abductin' of that there pore girl. The swabs! Lemme to 'em, I say; jest lemme to 'em."
With each crack of his musket a man in blue was falling. In the centre of this mass of struggling maniacs the men were fighting with gun swabs, handspikes, clubbed muskets, stones and fists. The night brought no rest, no pause to succor the wounded or bury the dead.
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