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I cried, "and there was our poor little top-hamper of intelligence on all these waves of instinct and wordless desire, these foaming things of touch and sight and feeling, like like a coop of hens washed overboard and clucking amidst the seas." Verrall laughed approval of the image I had struck out.
The black smoke rolled in thick clouds from the steamer's funnels, and the privateer's topmasts snapped and bent like fishing-rods, while her white-faced captain paced his quarter-deck, dividing his attention between his imperilled top-hamper and the pursuing steamer, and rubbing his hands nervously. At last the climax came.
But as to the strange rig that they had worn in their days of active sea-faring, I could only guess at it; for such of them as had come into this death-haven with any of their top-hamper still standing, as some of them no doubt had come, long since had lost it first the standing-rigging and later the masts rotting, and so all together falling in a heap anyway upon the decks or over the side.
The worst that can come, after all, of too much top-hamper, is to cut away, and let it drift with the scud. May I make bold to ask, judge, if the courts have done any thing, of late, concerning the freebooters among the islands?" "I have not the honor to bear Her Majesty's commission," coldly returned Van Staats of Kinderhook, to whom this question had been hardily put.
The four galleys were similar to the galeasses in every respect except that of size, in which they were by one-third inferior. All the ships of the fleet galeasses, galleys, galleons, and hulks were so encumbered with top-hamper, so overweighted in proportion to their draught of water, that they could bear but little canvas, even with smooth seas and light and favourable winds.
MacRae grinned to himself and went down to the grimy wharf where deep-sea halibut schooners rubbed against the dock, their stubby top-hamper swaying under the office windows as they rocked to the swell of passing harbor craft. He talked with Hurley, the same gentleman whom he had once approached with no success in the matter of selling salmon. The situation was reversed now.
Shall we send the royal and topgallant- yards down on deck, sir, and house the topmasts whilst we are about it?" "We may as well," I replied. "If it comes on to blow heavily the schooner will be all the easier if relieved of her top-hamper, and if it turns out to be a false alarm, why we can soon get her ataunto again, and there will be no harm done."
And next it we observe a very powerfully executed oil painting representing a schooner-yacht, with topmasts struck and all other top-hamper down on deck, hove-to under close-reefed storm-trysail and spitfire jib, in close proximity to an evidently disabled and sinking ocean steamer, over whose more than half-submerged hull the mountain seas are breaking with terrific violence, sweeping away boats, hencoops, deck-fittings, bulwarks, and even some of the unfortunate people, who are dimly seen through the torrents of driving spray and cataracts of pouring water clinging here and there to the stanchions and rigging: the fury of the gale in which the great ship is perishing is admirably conveyed in the height and shape of the huge olive-green seas, their crests torn off and swept away to leeward in horizontal showers of spindrift, and the black, menacing hue of the sky, across which tattered shreds of smoky-looking cloud are careering wildly.
Already the European sailors were at work, some cutting away useless top-hamper, others attempting to drag the terror-stricken Malays to a place of comparative safety. Luke FitzHenry took command of these men, as was his duty, working like one of them, with infinite daring. He could only communicate with his captain by signs, speech being impossible. It was a seaman's fight.
Daughtry and the captain emerged last from the cabin, and both stared upward for a moment at the gaps in the slender, sky-scraping top-hamper, where, only minutes before, the main- and mizzen-topmasts had been.
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