Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 9, 2025
But cap'n, he have a little roun' hole in the back of his head. Yass, sah he was shot f'om behine!" The sea that night was as calm and as untroubled as if the day had passed in Sabbath quiet. It seemed impossible that we had endured so much, that Captain Whidden and Mr. Thomas were dead, that the space of only twenty-four hours had wrought such a change in the fortunes of all on board.
When the brief, perfunctory service was over, Mr. Falk put away the prayer-book, I verily believe he put away with it all fear of the Lord, folded his arms and faced us arrogantly. "By the death of Captain Whidden and Mr. Thomas," he said, "I have become the rightful master of this ship. Now I've got a few things to say to you, and I'm going to have them understood.
"Men," he said, putting on a grave face that seemed to me assumed for the occasion, "men, we've come through a dangerous time, and we are lucky to have come alive out of the bad scrape that we were in. Some of us haven't come through so well. It's a sad thing for a ship to lose an officer, and it is twice as sad to lose two fine officers like Captain Whidden and Mr. Thomas.
After all said and done, Lemuel Shackford was his kinsman, and blood is thicker than water! Coroner Whidden shortly appeared on the scene, accompanied by a number of persons; a jury was impaneled, and then began that inquest which resulted in shedding so very little light on the catastrophe.
It was like a play to watch the men sitting here and there on deck, or talking idly around the forecastle, while Captain Whidden and the chief mate conferred together aft. I was so much taken with it all that I had no eyes for my own people who were there to see me off, until straight out from the crowded wharf there came a young man whom I knew well.
I heard a bullet sing over my head and saw one of our own seamen in the waist fall and lie quite still. Should we never answer her in kind? In three minutes, it seemed, we should have to meet her men hand to hand. Now our helmsman luffed, and we came closer into the wind, which gave our guns a chance. "Now, then," Captain Whidden cried, "let them have the long gun and hold the rest."
But we found no trace of the lost money. It seemed like sacrilege to disturb little things that once had belonged to that upright gentleman, Captain Joseph Whidden.
The lumber was purchased from James Woodman, William Hazen, Nehemiah Beckwith, Patrick Rogers, John Whidden and others, the usual price being, for boards £4 per M., and for shingles 15 shillings per M. The work of building must have progressed rapidly, for when winter came, about 1,500 dwellings afforded shelter.
For my own part, it seemed to me as unreal as a nightmare that Captain Joseph Whidden actually had been shot dead by a band of Arab pirates. I was bewildered indeed, stunned by the incredible suddenness of the calamity. It was so complete, so appallingly final!
Craggie finished the remainder of his glass of sherry in silence, and presently rose to go. Coroner Whidden and Mr. Ward had already gone. The guests in the public room were thinning out; a gloom, indefinable and shapeless like the night, seemed to have fallen upon the few that lingered. At a somewhat earlier hour tdhan usual the gas was shut off in the Stillwater hotel.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking