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Updated: June 5, 2025
I was obliged to remain upon the pirate ship while the brig set sail, and had soon vanished from our sight. As a thick mist arose we anchored on the edge of a sand-bank, and remained there over night; at break of day we again set sail and ran into a small, concealed, but very safe harbor on the coast of Cuba.
No words, but, in the place thereof, a clean, straight, hard hit, which took effect with a spank like the explosion of a percussion-cap, knocking the slayer of beeves down a sand-bank, followed, alas! by the too impetuous youth, so that both rolled down together, and the conflict terminated in one of those inglorious and inevitable Yankee clinches, followed by a general melee, which make our native fistic encounters so different from such admirably-ordered contests as that which I once saw at an English fair, where everything was done decently and in order; and the fight began and ended with such grave propriety, that a sporting parson need hardly have hesitated to open it with a devout petition, and, after it was over, dismiss the ring with a benediction.
There was one stone picture of many old ships in commotion among impossible waves, and the description was all in one word "Bossuzeeslag." It seemed very impressive to sit staring up at it while Mr. van Buren told how "we" whipped the Spanish ship "Inquisition" after thirty hours' fighting on the sand-bank, and all the people of Hoorn assembled to look on.
Accordingly we continued our course all that afternoon and night, without shortening sail, although the gunner pretended to discover Scilly light; and next morning protested in form against the captain's conduct, for which he was put in confinement, We discovered no land all that day, and Crampley was still so infatuated as to neglect sounding; but at three o'clock in the morning the ship struck, and remained fast on a sand-bank.
He soon thought of a plan, however; he opened both barn-doors, and then lay down at one end and blew, so that all the chaff flew out and lay like a sand-bank at the other end of the barn, and the grain was as clean as it could be. Then he reported to the squire that that job also was done. The squire said that that was well; there was nothing more for him to do that day.
The number of complete loops, of course, indicated the number of revolutions. A sand-bank makes a good butt to catch them. In rotating, much depends on the size and shape of the feather. Shooting a blunt arrow from a seventy-five pound bow at a white pine board an inch thick, the shaft will often go completely through it. A broad hunting head will penetrate two or three inches, then bind.
Dry sticks were soon collected, and some moss, which ignited almost immediately the glass was held over it. A bright fire was kindled. The shell-fish were cooked, Langton having selected those which appeared to him most likely to prove wholesome. "We are better off here than we were on the sand-bank," observed Mike. "We escaped from that, and we'll be afther getting away from this before long."
The whole sand-bank, with the exception of that part on which he stood, was now covered with tumultuous foam, and his place of refuge was occasionally invaded, when some vast mass, o'erlording the other waves, expended all its fury, even to his feet. Francisco prepared to die!
Even the treasures of the New World were inadequate to pay for the conquest of that little sand-bank. Within five years, twenty-five millions of florins had been sent from Spain for war expenses in the Netherlands.
The Irrawaddy is rapid in its flow, and, like all flood rivers, is constantly changing its course, as the scour of the water washes away a portion of the bank from one spot, to form a sand-bank in the stream lower down.
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