United States or Madagascar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At last he was free to go to the bridge. He found the quarter-master in the chart-house, on his knees. When the ship struck, the officer of the watch had been thrown headlong to port. Recovering his feet before a tumbling sea could fling him overboard, he hauled himself out of danger just in time to take part in the fray on deck. He came back now, hurrying to join the captain.
Officers move to and fro with padded footfalls, and the throb of the great engines is felt rather than heard. The wind begins to change, and presently the captain glancing out the door of the chart-house clucks his chagrin.
The doors to starboard and to port were both open; and as the Elsinore rolled a draught through the chart-house hall my lungs filled with pure, cool air. As I drew myself across the high threshold and pulled Margaret after me, from very far away I heard the cries of men and the reports of rifle and revolver.
His twelve-year-old vocabulary boasted such compound difficulties as mizzentopsail-yard and main-topgallantmast. He knew the intricate parts of a full-rigged ship from the mainsail to the deck, from the jib-boom to the chart-house. All this from pictures and books. It was the roving, restless spirit of his father in him, I suppose. Clint Kamps had never been meant for marriage.
Then he fell asleep, and slept soundly, too, in blissful ignorance of a conversation then taking place in the chart-house, though it had the most direct bearing on his own future. For von Kerber had seized the opportunity, when Mr. Fenshawe and the two ladies went below, to draw Stump into private conclave.
I did not wait to dress. Merely in pyjamas I headed for the poop, Possum wailing dismally at my desertion. It was a feat to travel the narrow halls. Time and again I paused and held on until my finger-tips hurt. In the moments of easement I made progress. Yet I miscalculated. The foot of the broad stairway to the chart-house rested on a cross-hall a dozen feet in length.
The others stood up also, and at the same moment Hilliard crept once more up the ladder to the bridge and crouched down in the shadow of the chart-house.
It happened that during this slight delay Courtenay glanced at the northern headland, which Elsie had christened Cape Templar, owing to the somewhat remarkable profile of a knight in armor offered by its seaward crags. Possibly, had he gone straight to the chart-house, he might not have noticed a signal fire which was in full blast on the summit of the cliff.
He bolted the door, and he ran into the chart-house to tap the barometer. It moved appreciably. It was rising! Ah, if only the wind moderated, he could save the Kansas yet! He glanced at the compass. Still the same course. Not a fraction of a point gained to the north. That was bad. The ship was already within the danger zone. Pray Heaven for a falling wind, or even a change to the southward!
And yet, a few minutes later, when he had gone below, I noticed Mr. Pike enter the chart-house. After several paces up and down, and a brief pause to watch Nancy and several men shift the weather cloth from lee to weather, I strolled aft to the chart-house. Prompted by I know not what, I peeped through one of the glass ports. There stood Mr.
Word Of The Day