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Updated: June 24, 2025
In a twinkling he was on the yard; he paused for a few seconds and appeared to be measuring it with his eye; these seconds, during which the breeze swayed the topman at the extremity of a thread, seemed centuries to those who were looking on. At last, the convict raised his eyes to heaven and advanced a step: the crowd drew a long breath.
As the topman saw no sufficient reason for concealing his astonishment at this wild opinion, it was manifested with all the embellishments with which the individual in question usually set forth any of his more visible emotions.
"This is all that young beggar Bobby Smudge's doing, I'll warrant," I heard Ned Grummit, a topman, exclaim, as he came down from aloft. "I never knowed a chap of that sort who went for to go for to drown hisself, if he threatened to do mischief, but found means to do it. I knowed it would be so from the first, and we shall be lucky if worse doesn't come of it."
"Port your helm! Hard over with it!" I exclaimed; "and stand by to brail up the mizzen if she fails to pay off." We had at the wheel one of the best helmsmen on board, a cool, smart, active topman; and, almost before the words were out of my mouth, he sent the wheel spinning hard over with a single jerk of his muscular arm, while Hardy mustered some three or four hands at the mizzen-brails.
Wilder compressed his lips, and the rest of the groupe manifested a good deal of amazement; but the latter had been too long accustomed to the caprice of their Commander, and the former was too wise, to speak at a moment when his humour seemed at the highest. The topman, however, was not long in making his appearance, and then the chief saw fit again to break the silence.
George Peabody, the great philanthropist, made his fortune and his fame in a little dark, dingy office in Warnford Court, London. The pretensions of the great firm of Topman and Gusher were not to be confined by any such examples of economy.
In the meantime, the unfortunate topman was losing his strength; his anguish could not be discerned on his face, but his exhaustion was visible in every limb; his arms were contracted in horrible twitchings; every effort which he made to re-ascend served but to augment the oscillations of the foot-rope; he did not shout, for fear of exhausting his strength.
It is very good of him to be so modest. But he, I am sure, will accept ze thanks of Topman and Gusher. Tis Kidd, gen-tle-men he must be one jolly, generous fellow. I loves tis gen-tle-man Kidd. He bury his dollars here in bushel baskets full. We find him, eh?" Here he again ran his hand into the sand, and drawing out several more discolored dollars threw them on the table.
And so these gestures, these attitudes, these swingings he imitated there with the vigor of an old topman joined to that of a leading premier, and I saw him as he was figuring in this quadrille of dancing dervishes. "Eh! Monsieur Claudius!" he said, "it is not difficult to copy the exercises of these gallant fellows!
He sent the topman down into the top for a tail-block and the studding-sail haulyards, made a whip, and lowered me on deck. I was immediately put into my hammock; and the surgeon ordering me some hot brandy-and-water, and plenty of blankets, in a few hours I was quite restored. O'Brien, who was at my bedside, said, "Never mind, Peter, and don't be angry with Mr Falcon, for he is very sorry."
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