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Updated: June 12, 2025
The Rancocus was far better provided with tools suited to the uses of the land, than was common for ships, her voyage contemplating a long stay among the islands she was to visit. Thus, axes and picks were not wanting, Captain Crutchely having had an eye to the possible necessity of fortifying himself against savages.
Mark stood on the bowsprit, and saw them shoot past the bows of the vessel, and then, almost immediately, become lost to view in the gloomy darkness of the terrible scene. The men never reappeared, a common and an unknown fate thus sweeping away Captain Crutchely and six of his best men, and all, as it might be, in a single instant of time!
So strong was the temptation, and so sweet did that morse taste, that Mark felt he might not refrain unless he had something to occupy his mind for a few minutes. Taking a small swallow of the wine and water, he again got on his feet, and staggered to the drawer in which poor Captain Crutchely had kept his linen. Here he got a shirt, and tottered on as far as the quarter-deck.
The intense darkness of the night added to the horrors of that awful moment. Nevertheless, the effect was to arouse all that there was of manliness and seamanship in Captain Crutchely, who from that instant appeared to be himself again. His orders were issued coolly, clearly and promptly, and they were obeyed as experienced mariners will work at an instant like that.
Crutchely, herself, though so much longer experienced, had scarcely looked after the captain's comfort with more judgment, and certainly not with greater solicitude, than this youthful bride had expended on her bridegroom's room.
Still, the mariners unhesitatingly steered out into its vast waters, and none with less reluctance and fewer doubts than those of America. For nearly two months did Captain Crutchely, after quitting Valparaiso, hold his way into the depths of that mighty sea, in search of the islands he had been directed to find.
It was when the ship settled in the troughs of the sea that she felt the bottom. Satisfied that his vessel was likely to beat over the present difficulty, Captain Crutchely now gave all his attention to getting her anchored as near the reef and to leeward of it, as possible.
The wisest thing Captain Crutchely could have done, placed in the circumstances in which he now found himself, would have been to stand off and on, under easy canvas, until the return of light, when he might have gone ahead on his course with some confidence, and a great deal more of safety.
While he was thus busied, Mark was looking to the stopper and shank-painter of the sheet-anchor, which had been got ready to let go, before Captain Crutchely was lost. He even succeeded in getting that heavy piece of metal a cock-bill, without calling on Bob for assistance.
Captain Crutchely had a thrifty wife, who had contributed her full share to render her husband comfortable, and Bridget thought that the room in which she was united to Mark was one of the prettiest she had ever seen. The reader, however, is not to imagine it a cabin ornamented with marble columns, rose-wood, and the maples, as so often happens now-a-days.
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