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Updated: September 25, 2024
This breeze just suits her, and she is a very different craft now to what she was when we overhauled her, laden down pretty nearly to her covering-board. I don't think, in a breeze like this, that the Tigre would be able to catch us, although, of course, if the wind strengthened much her weight would tell. However, there is no doubt at all that this craft is fast.
Her case was even worse than her mother imagined, for sometimes it was ten minutes to nine before Bloomah could sit down to her own breakfast, and then the steaming cup of tea served by her mother was a terrible hindrance; and if that good woman's head was turned, Bloomah would sneak towards the improvised sink which consisted of two dirty buckets, the one holding the clean water being recognisable by the tin pot standing on its covering-board where she would pour half her tea into the one bucket and fill up from the other.
As I leaned, the vessel heeled violently to a large swell caused by the volcanic disturbances. The roll was extraordinarily severe, heaving the vessel down to her covering-board; and the great hill of water running silent and in darkness through the sea, so that it could neither be viewed nor heard, made the sickening lurch a dreadful surprise and wonder.
The men sprang about the decks like wild-cats, and, in their elation and excitement, did the work of at least three men each; the yards were braced up almost as soon as the ship could luff to the wind; the tacks were seized and boarded with irresistible strength and energy, the sheets flattened in; and in considerably less than five minutes the Aurora was rushing along on a bowline with her lee covering-board nearly awash, and a clear, glassy surge spouting up on each side of her cutwater, and foaming away from her sharp bows with a hissing roar which was sweetest music just then to the ears of her delighted crew.
Her hull was coppered to about six inches beyond the water-line, and above this she was painted a cool grey up to her rail, this colour being relieved by a narrow scarlet riband along the covering-board.
Almost everything smashed and parted except the anchor-hold. The chocks were jerked out, the rail torn off, and the very covering-board splintered, and still the anchor held. At last, hoisting the reefed mainsail and slacking off a few of the hard-won feet of the chain, we sailed the anchor out. It was nip and tuck, though, and there were times when the boat was knocked down flat.
A big, glassy mound of swell came creeping along toward the felucca, and, as she rolled toward it, curled in over her covering-board and poured in a heavy torrent across her deck, swirling round my raft and shifting it a foot or two nearer the side; and as it swept past I dabbled one of my hands in it, and was dully surprised that the contact did not cause the water to hiss and boil!
The pressure on his lungs lessened, he was dazzled by a strong light, and feeling the edge of the hulk's deck, he got his knee on her covering-board and lurched forward. Somebody took off his helmet and lifted the weight from his chest. He shut his eyes and for a few moments lay on the deck. "Well?" said Brown presently. "You reached the engine-room?" Lister nodded. "She's badly sanded up.
The Spray changed her being so gradually that it was hard to say at what point the old died or the new took birth, and it was no matter. The bulwarks I built up of white-oak stanchions fourteen inches high, and covered with seven-eighth-inch white pine. These stanchions, mortised through a two-inch covering-board, I calked with thin cedar wedges. They have remained perfectly tight ever since.
She carried a short topgallant forecastle forward, and a full poop aft, reaching to within about twenty-five feet from the mainmast; and between these two structures the bulwarks had been completely swept away, leaving only a jagged stump of a stanchion here and there protruding above the covering-board.
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