Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
Or, if that attempt also should fail, we surely ought to be able, with the help of the barque's people, to communicate with the authorities ashore, and claim from them rescue from our present precarious and exceedingly unpleasant situation." "Y-e-es," my companion assented meditatively.
A cry from my companions made me turn my head. The barque's sails were shivering, as she luffed up to the wind. Directly after a boat was seen to be lowered, and quickly being manned, it pulled towards us. Then indeed our hearts rose to our bosoms, and we shouted with joy. Poor Tom, from the great revulsion of feeling, was nearly fainting and falling off the raft, had we not supported him.
And she glided past him into the house. "Was the lass speakin' wi' you, skipper?" asked my father. "Yes," said Gordon. "She was telling me that my barque's masts are too high." "Ay! but it's no' sae often that she'll speak wi' a man. She's a blate lass wi' maist folk. But what kens she about a vessel's masts, I wonder?"
Daylight brought with it a clear sky, dappled with high, fleecy, white, fine-weather clouds, and a moderate breeze from the south-east, with a very heavy, confused sea still running, however; and as the barque's royals were still in sight above the horizon, we cracked on after her, although the carpenter had warned Ryan that the work done during the night was scarcely as satisfactory as might be, and that the mast-head was hardly to be trusted.
Five minutes later they shoved off from the Shawnee, whose lofty spars and drooping canvas towered darkly up in the starless night. At the last moment Gerald Rodman had hoisted a light on the mizzen-rigging as a guide to the four absent boats. As the mutineers pulled quickly away its rays shone dimly over the barque's deserted decks.
Captain Gordon never, in my hearing, referred directly to my sister Jessie's caution about the barque's masts; but I noticed that the new masts were made shorter and stouter than those that had suffered in the storm. There was also some difficulty in procuring new boats for the ship; but Captain Flett at last found a jolly boat, and one morning early I took it out to the Lydia.
Soon after this, on looking through the glass I observed the barque's sails fill out, though the wind came from a different quarter to that from which we got it. "We may still cut her off, though we must steer rather more to the westward than we are doing," remarked Mudge, altering the boat's course.
Cross's burly form, drawn cutlass and conspicuously displayed pistol, supported by the appearance of the barque's crew in his immediate background, proving an effectual deterrent to any attempt on the part of the privateersmen to make a rush for freedom, and in something like a couple of hours from the time of her capture, the Aurora, was once more in the undisputed possession of her rightful owner.
The arrangement was this: The City of Cawnpore's to wing-hawser was now stretched between the two vessels, one end being made fast to the barque's mizenmast, while the other end led in over the City of Cawnpore's bows, through a warping chock, and was secured somewhere inboard, probably to the windlass bitts it would have been much more convenient had the hawser been made fast to the foremast, about fifteen or twenty feet from the deck; but a very heavy intermittent strain was being thrown upon it, and I imagined that Dacre did not care to run the risk of springing so important a spar.
Be that as it may, we had just made it noon when the quarter-master called our attention to the fact that the barque's people had loosed their main-topgallant-sail and were sheeting it home over the double-reefed topsail. It was an imprudent thing to do, however, for the sail had scarcely been set ten minutes when the topgallant-mast went over the side, snapped short off by the cap.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking