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Updated: July 17, 2025
Up to this time I was bound for New York; but when all was over I rose, made sail, and hove the sloop round from starboard to port tack, to make for a quiet harbor to think the matter over; and so, under short sail, she reached in for the coast of Long Island, while I sat thinking and watching the lights of coasting-vessels which now began to appear in sight.
Farther out, a fishhawk came down heavily, Souse! and rose with a big chub. And none of these sharp-eyed wood folk saw me or knew that they were watched. Then a wide, wavy, blue line, like a great Cupid's bow, came gliding swiftly along the opposite bank of green, and Quoskh hove into sight for his morning's fishing.
I told him, no; because I knew from what Lord Grey had told me, that the Channel was full of men-of-war searching every ship which hove in sight; besides, he did not look to me to be a very promising hand for a captain to take aboard. "All the same," he said, "I got to risk it. You say there may be troops coming?"
The schooner brought up all standing, the sea at the same instant making a terrific breach over her; but the helmsman was a good hand, and sheered her over to the exact spot the pinnace must pass. The whole was the work of a moment. The boat drifted near, a rope was hove into her, and providentially caught by the nearly exhausted crew.
One of the bakers went on a hunt for a policeman, and presently the officer of the law hove into sight. Dick was just coming to his senses, but was too dazed for several minutes to give an account of what had happened. At last he said a man had struck him down with a club. "Were you robbed?" asked the policeman. Dick felt in his various pockets. "No, sir." "You were lucky."
Still Captain Hartland was not a man to yield while a possibility remained of saving his ship and the lives of those entrusted to him. The corvette carried aft two heavy guns for throwing shells. Some spare hempen cables were got up from below, and made fast to them; when hove overboard they checked her way. Daylight at length came, and revealed her terrific position.
Dawn now appeared and invited me to afternoon tea, which was a friendly and hospitable meal spread on a big table on a back verandah, so enclosed by creepers and pot-plants and little awnings leading in various directions as to be in reality more of a vestibule. Mrs Bray hove into near view and took up a seat beside a bank of lovely maiden-hair fern.
Eighty fathoms, and no bottom! A depth as great as the height of St. Peter's! The line is snatched in a block upon the swifter, and three or four men haul it in and coil it away. The after yards are braced full, the studding-sails hauled out again, and in a few minutes more the ship had her whole way upon her. At four bells, backed again, hove the lead, and soundings! at sixty fathoms!
A couple of chairs and a hen-coop had been hove to him, but not till he had been left some way astern. Reginald, on hearing the cry, ran aft, and without waiting to take off even his hat, lowered himself into the water and struck out towards the wellnigh drowning lad. It was evening, and darkness was rapidly coming on. Intense was the excitement of all on board.
Together we hove the great stone into the boat as it rocked on the edge of the tide, starting a plank or two. I stove in one altogether with an oar, shoved her off with all my might, and saw her fill at once, and sink with the weight in her some twenty yards from shore. She would not be seen again till dead low water. Then we hove the oars into the bushes.
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