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Updated: August 25, 2024
"There is no good in stopping by the old barquey any longer, for we can't help her out of her trouble, and the boats may be stove in by the falling mainmast if they remain alongside much longer.
"Well, bosun," said Captain Gillespie, "it looks as if we'll have to fight those rascals coming up astern and making for us. The cowards! They didn't dare attack the old barquey when she was all ataunto in the open sea; and only now rely on their numbers and the fact of our being in limbo here. However, if they do attack us, we shall have a fight for it."
It would be impossible if I tried to picture her for "a month of Sundays," as Captain Applegarth used to say on board the old barquey when he thought a fellow spent too much time over a job.
"Steady amidship, there," sang out the skipper as the old barquey forged ahead once more. "Steady, my man." "Aye, aye, sir," answered the foremost hand, Parrell, who had come from the fo'c's'le to take the first "trick" at the steering wheel on the bridge. "Steady it is." "How does the boat bear now, Haldane?" "Two points off our starboard bow, sir," I replied to this hail of the skipper.
"This is splendid!" said he, rubbing his hands as usual and addressing the first mate, while I crept away further aft, holding on to the bulwarks to preserve my footing, the deck being inclined at such a sharp angle from the ship heeling over with the wind. "I don't know when the old barquey ever went so free." "Nor I, sir," replied the other with equal enthusiasm; "she's fairly outdoing herself.
As he said this, Mr Fosset, who was still on the bridge conning the old barquey, having at once ported our helm, on the skipper holding up his cutlass, taking this for a signal, we came broadside-on, slap against the hull of the other ship with a jolt that shook her down to her very kelson, rolling a lot of the darkies, who were grouped aft, off their legs like so many ninepins.
I should think I did." "That same, alannah. He wasn't a bad sort of chap, an' a good sayman, ivvry inch of him, though I used for to call him an ould thaife just `for fun an' fancy' as the old song says well, he's lift the ould barquey an' gone with Cap'en Fosset in the Fairi Quane. But ye haven't axed me onst afther yer ould fri'nd Spokeshave! Sure, now, ye haven't forgot little `Conky, faith!"
With this press of canvas topping her unaccustomed hull, the poor old barquey heeled over more and more as the violent gusts caught her broadside-on at intervals, rolling, too, a bit on the wind fetching round aft; while, her stern lifting as some bigger roller than usual passed under her keel, the screw would whiz round aimlessly in mid air, from missing its grip of the water, "racing," as sailors say in their lingo, with a harsh grating jar that set my teeth on edge, and seemed to vibrate through my very spinal marrow as I stood for a moment on the line of deck immediately over the revolving shaft.
"The old barquey, though, has come through it better than any one would have supposed, with all that deadweight amidships, considering that she broached-to awhile ago and got caught in the trough of the sea the very moment the machinery below gave out. By George, Fosset, we had a narrow squeak then, I can tell you!"
The magisthrates belayvin' the ould Star of the North wid you, cap'en, wid the colonel aboard, to give ividence ag'st the mutineers, that they wouldn't be in from New York afore then, not knowin' what the ould barquey could do in the way of stayming as you an' I do, sor, an' that she'd arrive, faith, to-day!"
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