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Updated: August 14, 2024
He had been standing on the bridge overhead, looking into the binnacle, and the moment he heard the report, and whilst the destructive shower was still falling fast, he jumped upon the deck, and ordered an immediate descent to the ladies' saloon, in the firm conviction that they were all there as on the previous evening.
"That's a relief," remarked Adam, who had struck a match and studied his watch. "The ground's clear and Don Hernando has somebody he can trust waiting at the lagoon. You can let her go ahead, Captain." Mayne rang his telegraph and Kit went into the pilot house. The dim light of the binnacle lamp touched the compass, but everything else was dark and the windows were down.
"You see, it is all through those long-winded chaps, who won't be content with what the Creator gives them, but must put a cause and reason for everything beyond God's own will and pleasure, and who lay down arbitrary rules of their own for the guidance of Dame Nature, though, between you and I and the binnacle, Haldane, the old lady got on well enough for a good many scores of years I'd be sorry to say how many without their precious help!
Jager, although a powerful man, and, when sober, more than a match for his antagonist, was overborne and driven with great violence against the binnacle, which, being of inferior quality and ill secured, like everything else in the miserable vessel, gave way under his weight, and the compass was dashed to pieces on the deck. Jim ran to assist his comrade, and Bunks attempted to interfere.
The lobsterman made other attempts at conversation, but they were unproductive. McKay was gazing at the growing fog bank and thinking hard. To doctor an engine may be difficult, but to get lost in a fog He took the compass from the glass-lidded binnacle by the wheel, and carrying it into the little cabin, placed it in the cuddy forward.
And thus, like a frightened gull fleeing from sea-hawks, the little Parki swooped along, and bravely breasted the brine. His shattered arm in a hempen sling, Samoa stood at the helm, the muskets reloaded, and planted full before him on the binnacle.
Ere the situation had been well realised the volcanic fires went down again, and left the world, for over a hundred surrounding miles, in opaque darkness. Only the humble flicker of the binnacle light, like a trusty sentinel on duty, continued to shed its feeble rays on a few feet of the deck, and showed that the compass at least was still faithful to the pole!
"D n my eyes, if you call this start my timbers, brother look ye, d'ye see a lousy, lubberly, cowardly son of a among the breakers, d'ye see lost my steerage way split my binnacle; bawl away O! d n all arrantry give me a tight vessel, d'ye see, brother mayhap you may n't snatch my sea-room and a spanking gale odds heart, I'll hold a whole year's smite my limbs; it don't signify talking."
It was warm, and, on examination at the binnacle lamp, turned out to be mud. Slight at first, it soon poured down in such quantities that in ten minutes it lay six inches thick on the deck, and the crew had to set to work with shovels to heave it overboard.
Sometimes, of a moonlight night he glided about the deck, like the ghost of a hospital attendant; flitting from mast to mast; now hovering round the skylight, now vibrating in the vicinity of the binnacle. When we were but a few days from port, a comical adventure befell this cabin-passenger.
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