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The dory slackened speed, turned in obedience to the steering oar, and slid under the forequarter of the anchored vessel. Ellery, looking up, saw her name in battered gilt letters above his head the San Jose. "Stand by, Thoph!" shouted Charlie. "S'pose you can jump and grab her forechains? Hold her steady, Bill. Now, Thoph! That's the time!"
Thoph and his companions set up a storm of protest. It was foolish, it was crazy, the man would die anyhow, and so on. They begged the minister to come with them. But he was firm. "Don't stop to argue," he urged. "Hurry and get the doctor." "Come on, Charlie," ordered Bill. "No use talkin' to him, he's set. Come on! I won't stay alongside this craft another minute for nobody.
"Charlie Burgess just come down along and he says there's a ship's longboat hauled up on the beach, 'bout a mile 'n a half t'other side the mouth of the herrin' crick yonder. Oars in her and all. And she ain't no boat that b'longs round here, is she, Charlie?" "No, Thoph, she ain't," was the reply. "Make anything out of her, cap'n?"
But always the shoulders of the rowers moved steadily in the short, deep strokes of the rough water oarsman, and the beach, with the white light and red-roofed house of the keeper, the group beside it, and Captain Zeb's horse and chaise, grew smaller and less distinct. "Humph!" grunted Charlie. "What's the matter?" asked Thoph.
The light which shone through the dirty and tightly closed "bull's-eye" window showed a tumbled bunk, the blankets soiled and streaked. The smell was stifling. "Say, fellers," whispered Thoph, "I don't like this much myself. I'm for gettin' on deck where the air's better. Somethin's happened aboard this craft, somethin' serious." Charlie and Bill nodded an emphatic affirmative.
Lute was on deck, cutaway coat, "high water" trousers and purple tie, grand to look upon, Alvin Baker and Elnathan Mullet and Alonzo Black and Thoph Newcomb and Zeb Kendrick were, as the Item would say, "among those present" and if Zeb's black cutaway smelled slightly of fish it was, at least, a change from the pervading "May Lilac." Captain Jed strutted pompously about, monarch of the day.
Yeller jack was the trouble aboard her and Where you bound, Thoph?" "Goin' to take a squint at the fo'castle," replied Theophilus, moving forward. The minister followed him. The fo'castle hatchway was black and grim. Ellery knelt and peered down. Here there was practically no light at all and the air was fouler than that in the cabin. "See anything, Mr.
Ellery?" asked Thoph, looking over his shoulder. "No, I don't see anything. But I thought " He seemed to be listening. "What did you think?" "Nothing. "Hold on! you ain't goin' down there, be you? I wouldn't. No tellin' what you might find. Well, all right. I ain't curious. I'll stay up here and you can report." He stepped over and leaned against the rail. Bill came across the deck and joined him.
"You ask Ros," shouted Alvin, pounding the counter beside him. "Say, Ros, Newcomb here seems to think that because a feller comes from the city and is rich that that gives him the right to order the rest of us around as if we was fo'mast hands. He says " "I don't neither!" yelled Thoph. "What I say is that money counts, and " "You do, too!
Parker's horse was hitched to one of the posts. "You can't go in, Mrs. Coffin," said Thoph Black. "The doctor give us his orders not to let nobody get by. I guess nobody wants to, but all the same " Keziah paid not the slightest attention to Mr. Black. She stooped beneath his arm, under the rope and was on her way to the shanty before they realized her intention.
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