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Her owners -they were a very well known Scotch firm came round with her from the north, where she had been launched and christened and fitted, to Liverpool, where she was to take cargo for New York; and the owner's daughter, Miss Frazier, went to and fro on the clean decks, admiring the new paint and the brass work, and the patent winches, and particularly the strong, straight bow, over which she had cracked a bottle of champagne when she named the steamer the Dimbula.
All night long the work went on, and I watched it from a deck above, going in now and then for food and hot drinks. On her dock side, forward, Christmas boxes, bales and packages were being whipped up out of her hold to the rattle of her winches. One sharp whistle and up they shot into the air till they swung some seventy feet above.
When they arrived on deck, Cavendish considered, upon inspection, that the tide would serve, as it was now rising rapidly; he therefore immediately gave orders that the winches and capstans should be manned, and the ships hove in towards the beach until their keels touched bottom. This was done, and soon the two vessels had been hauled in until they grounded gently.
And on this dazzling sheet, spread under the blackness of the clouds and emitting a bluish glow, Captain MacWhirr could catch a desolate glimpse of a few tiny specks black as ebony, the tops of the hatches, the battened companions, the heads of the covered winches, the foot of a mast. This was all he could see of his ship.
A man came down the ladder when the launch jarred against its foot, and Ida, finding that Fuller was still on board, went up while Dick steamed across to the cargo-boat that lay with winches hammering not far off. After talking to her mate, he returned to the harbor, and when he landed, lighted a cigarette and studied some alterations that were being made at the landward end of the mole.
The great steel cable vibrated until it fairly hummed with the strain, the Chih' Yuen's winches bucked and kicked until Wong-lih, on the cruiser's bridge, momentarily expected them to break away altogether, and the white water foamed and roared under both vessels' quarters as the screws whirred round.
Mayhew, I think there ought to be a good chance of getting the 'Hudson' afloat with plenty of water under her whole keel. We can even start some of the engines on shore, and rig winches to haul on extra cables. Altogether, we can give you a strong pull, sir." "That sounds like the best plan to me," nodded Jacob Farnum. "I'll have a message sent at once for that towboat."
Sobered by the dangers they foresaw, these men ran to the pit-mouth, pushed straight to the centre of the crowd there, and fell to work quietly with their ropes and winches.
To-day, as I am writing, some hundreds of forcats, in their striped brown uniforms, are tugging at their winches and ropes to drag the column of the Immaculate Virgin to its pedestal on the Piazza di Spagna.
There the things were: rods, lines, hooks, winches, landing-net, baits, ground-bait; in short, everything, from the basket that was to hold the fish, down to the tiny hook that was to catch them.
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