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Updated: June 4, 2025
"Then why didn't you get a bit out of a lantern afore you come aboard?" "'Cause nobody didn't tell me," growled Tom, who ceased rowing and splashed the space between the thole-pins with a few drops of water, when the noise ceased.
"Your house is the nearer," said he, "and the sooner they reach a warm fire the better for them after their drenching." And with that he lifted his cap to us, turned abruptly, and pushed off his own boat, scarcely regarding our thanks. A somewhat awkward pause followed as we stood on the beach, listening to the creak of the thole-pins in the departing boat.
The sun, declining toward the west, scattered rose-hues among the clouds. Sloops and schooners had lost steerage-way, and their sails flapped idly against the masts. The grind of oars between the thole-pins came distinctly across the water from far-distant boats, while songs and calls of birds, faint and etherealized, reached them from the shores.
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.
But they knew in their hearts that she had. Peck 2: "Didn't you steal her milk bottles?" "What a lie! It's absolutely false!" Yet they knew that she did. Peck 3: "Didn't you tangle up their fish lines and take their thole-pins?" "Well, I never! You ought to be ashamed to ask a lady such questions!" They found her guilty.
Cornelius grunted. "Are you too tired to row?" he asked after a silence. "No, by God!" shouted Brown suddenly. "Out with your oars there." There was a great knocking in the fog, which after a while settled into a regular grind of invisible sweeps against invisible thole-pins.
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.
Some small boat, evidently, but of heavy build, for it takes a vigorous hand to propel it, and now there is a grinding of oars on thole-pins. Strange that it is not yet seen, for the sound is near. Look! Is that a shadow crossing that wrinkle of starlight in the water? The oars have stopped, and there is no wind to make that sound of a sigh. Ho, Rambout Van Dam! Is it you?
'Very well, said he, 'but mind, if ye sink my boat, ye'll have three pounds to pay. Rob went back eager and joyous. Forthwith, a thorough inspection of the boat was set about by the lads in conjunction; they tested the oars; they tested the thole-pins; they had a new piece of cork put into the bottom.
Out at sea, but invisible, for beyond the moon's influence, a boat was being rowed fast: the beat of the oars on the thole-pins came distinctly. And in the wood behind, now cut off from them by the riding waves, owls called incessantly.
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