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"Make the lords in waiting do it, then," said the surly god; "and if they are too lazy, which I dare say they are, send for a boatswain's mate from the Royal Billy he'd sarve her out, I warrant you, and for half a gallon of rum would teach the yeomen of the guard to dance the binnacle hornpipe into the bargain."
I'll just take his bearin's, for the fun of the thing, and see how much he head-reaches on us durin' the next hour." Saying which he trotted aft to the binnacle and very carefully took the bearings of the brig, which we both made to be exactly east-south-east.
The captain and his two mates were swept away, and dashed almost senseless against the bulwarks the binnacle and compass were broken into fragments no one ran to the helm the vessel broached to the seas broke clear over her, and the mainmast went by the board. All was confusion.
I forgot the incident in the whirl of happenings that followed, but the Fijian had a longer memory. Late that afternoon he was holding the wheel with Soma, the big Kanaka who had jerked the knife at me, and as I stopped to peer at the binnacle he beckoned me toward him. "That was me that sing," he shrieked, as I put down my head. "I tell damn big lie you an' Miss Herndon." "Why?"
In almost as short a space as I have taken to write it, every inch of canvass was close furled every light, except the one in the binnacle, and that was cautiously masked, carefully extinguished a hundred and twenty men at quarters, and the ship under bare poles. The head yards were then squared, and we bore up before the wind.
The ruddy light of the binnacle lamp streamed up in the face of the latter, and revealed his curly fair hair clustering in wild disorder over his flushed brow, as, with fire gleaming in his blue eyes, he stared up in his companion's face and related how that Bax, in the coolest manner possible, had kept treading water with the girl in his arms, knowing quite well that not even his strength, great though it was, could enable him to pull himself by the rope to the ship against the tide, and knowing that, in a few minutes, some one would get into the boat and pick them up.
He let go his hold, and, propelled by the dip of the ship, ran aft unwillingly, with small steps, till he brought up against the binnacle stand. Hanging on there he looked up in an aimless manner at Singleton, who, unheeding him, watched anxiously the end of the jib-boom "Steering gear works all right?" he asked.
Who wants a lock without a key, a ship without a rudder, a binnacle without a compass, a check without a signature, a greenback without a goldback behind it?
That's where the Hun has the pull over us. He's got something better than a seal to welcome him back to harbour when he does get back!" "When he does, yes." The other chuckled. "Gretchens an' iron crosses an' joy bells. Lord, I'd love to see 'em, wouldn't you? Just for five minutes!" The Commander moved across to the tiny binnacle. "I'd rather see my own wife for five minutes," he replied.
Bloody Bill, as the men invariably called him, was standing at the tiller; but his post for the present was a sinecure, and he whiled away the time by alternately gazing in dreamy abstraction at the compass in the binnacle and by walking to the taffrail in order to spit into the sea.
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