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I had no chance of escape by any sudden effort of strength or activity, for a piece of a handspike had been thrust across my back, passing under both of my arms, which were tightly lashed to it, as if I had been trussed for roasting, so that I could no more run, with a chance of escape, than a goose without her pinions.
"What do you mean, you young rascal?" cried Mivins with a frown. "Mean!" said Davie, "why, I mean that if you touch me I'll resign office; and if I do that, you'll have to go out, for every one knows you can't get on without me." "I say, Mivins," cried Tom Green, the carpenter's mate, "if you were asked to say, 'Hold on hard to this handspike here, my hearties, how would ye go about it?"
Just as I did that, one of their number gave me, with his heavy boot, a powerful kick in the left eye. My eyeball seemed to have burst. When they saw my eye closed, and badly swollen, they left me. With this I seized the handspike, and for a time pursued them. But here the carpenters interfered, and I thought I might as well give it up. It was impossible to stand my hand against so many.
Pipes, whose perception had been just sufficient to let him see that there was some difference between the present and former situation of his master, overhearing his transports, essayed to enter his apartment, with a view of administering consolation; and, finding the door locked on the inside, desired admittance, protesting, that otherwise he would down with the bulkhead in the turning of a handspike.
The crew, indignant at the way one they looked upon as their friend was treated, threw down the pauls, and refused to work any longer. Jack Handspike alone remained firm in entreating them to obey orders. "Mr Kydd is now master of the ship, and if we do not obey him, whom are we to obey?" he said.
I eagerly scrambled in that direction, but could see no way over it. I must get inside, as I first intended. I thought then, if I could force off the top, I might make my way through it to an upper stratum of the cargo. I did as I proposed. In vain I tried with my back and hands to force up the top. I had forgotten to bring the handspike.
I ought to know better how to manage a raft than those landsmen," and he cast a glance at me; "and I promise to take good care of you and your brothers." I did not hear what the young lady said, but directly afterwards I saw her being lowered down on to Kydd's raft. Her brothers and the young Irishman followed. "Come, Handspike; we want you," sung out Kydd, standing up on the raft.
To stand alone, in the forefront of the fight, defying the terrors from which others shrank, was the situation which of all others he most coveted; and under the walls of Chapultepec, answering shot for shot, and plying sponge and handspike with desperate energy, the fierce instincts of the soldier were fully gratified. Nor was Magruder the man to proffer prudent counsels.
It was just at that moment that Brace and I, passing round the larboard-bow, came in sight of the crew; and, without a moment's hesitation, my companion using the oar, and I doing what I could with a handspike, set our little raft in motion, directing it as well as we could towards the other with which we supposed in a few seconds we should be able to come up.
The merchants, being both superstitious and scrupulous, believed I should occasion some mischief to their voyage if they received me; 'therefore, said one, 'I will knock him down with a handspike'; said another, 'I will shoot an arrow through him'; said a third, 'Let us throw him into the sea. Some of them would not have failed to do so, if I had not got to that side where the captain was.
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