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Updated: June 4, 2025
Came the creak of tackle, the thud of iron upon steel then a silence then a rattle of oars in thole-pins then a clear hail from the darkness: "All's well, Captain Merrithew!" Another boat clattered down the steel sides and cleared safely, and still another. The last boat was filling with the last of the crew. "Everybody accounted for?"
The morning was fine; in the east the sun had just risen, and was flooding the grim rock with a rosy light. Except this rock, no trace of land was visible as far as the eye could see. Alongside the steamer was moored a sailing-boat with two masts, but provided also with thole-pins, and sweeps for rowing.
Not a leaf stirred; and the boat, when we came up to it, offered convincing proof of long desertion. She was an eighteen-foot whaleboat of the ordinary type, equipped with oars and thole-pins.
And the cabin hatch will do for a deck. Spikes for thole-pins, and oars from the pinnace. Unlace the bonnet of the jib for a sail." "You are a proper sailorman, Joe. A voyage by starlight to an unknown coast. 'Tis highly romantic." They set to work without delay. Captain Wellsby had occupations of his own and no more than glanced at them in passing.
In vain he casts the dory adrift; she will not float away; the flood tide bears her back to give her testimony against him, and afterward she is found at Jaffrey's Point, near the "Devil's Den," and the fact of her worn thole-pins noted.
The sailors began to rig the spars and tackle as a derrick set up on the bank of the creek, with grapple hooks like huge tongs to swing out over the water and grope in the muddy depths. Absorbed in this fascinating task, they were startled beyond measure to hear the thump, thump of thole-pins sounding from somewhere below them in the swamp. It was no Indian pirogue.
The muscles of his arms rise up like rolls of gutta-percha; the knotted veins stand out on his flushed forehead, but all in vain the house continues to diverge, and Ian feeling the game to be all but lost, pulls with the concentrated energy of rage and despair. The sculls bend like wands, the rowlocks creak, the thole-pins crack. It won't do. As well might mortal man pull against Niagara falls.
"Not wanted" "not wanted" the paddles took up the burden and beat it into a sort of tune to the creak of the thole-pins.
The heat, as the day advanced, had become intolerable; but it stimulated him to fresh exertion. He turned over the boat, and contrived that the bow and stern should rest upon two little hillocks, so as to raise it above the level of the sand beneath it two or three feet; he spread out the sail from the keel above, with the thole-pins as pegs, so as to keep off the rays of the sun.
She stood up and strained her eyes through the darkness, trying to see the laboring forms of the rowers in the shadow of the boat's side, but only the creak of the thole-pins and the steady recurrent splash and tinkle from the dripping oars told of their labor. "Air ye goin' as fast as ye can?" she called. "Mr. Droop'll get there fust ef ye ain't real spry."
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