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There was a thrill in the fading voice; a thrill of devotion to the man who had destroyed him. "So he broke me, Nelson did, and I don't blame him: discipline is discipline, all said. Told the Admiralty they could choose between him and me between Lord Nelson of the Nile, that is, and old Ding-dong, who'd climbed to the quarter-deck through the hawse-holes.... So they chose."
The position was not without advantages, when riding head to wind, in hot tropical weather; but under way, close-hauled, with a stiff breeze, a good deal of salt water found its way in, especially if the jackasses were in the hawse-holes.
The trireme behind was manning her other banks and drawing down apace. Hiram cast a hopeless glance toward her. “I know those ‘eyes’—those red hawse-holes—the Nausicaä. Come what may, Themistocles must not read the packet in the cabin. There is one chance.” He approached the splintered hatchway and outstretched his hands—weaponless.
But no Gr-r the iron chains would go, Kr-r the iron hawse-holes would echo, and, suddenly brought to, dead she would stop, shake herself, and again shake herself to get free; but always the savage chains would be there to her throat, and down she would fall trembling; and the white slaver would scatter a cable length from her jaws as she fell.
"Ay, ay! you shall be an officer in time, my hearty," answered the Coxswain "Lord High Admiral, for a certainty; but you must creep through the hawse-holes first. There's nothing like half-a-dozen cruises before the mast for taking the conceit out of a maple-faced hobbledehoy."
"And I say unto thee," hallooed Crowe, "if so be as how love pretends to turn his hawse-holes to the wind, he's no seaman, d'ye see, but a snotty-nosed lubberly boy, that knows not a cat from a capstan a don't."
The captain was very much flustered with his unusually large living cargo, but he was a good-hearted man, and very careful, having, to use his own phrase, "climbed in at the hawse-holes, and worked his way aft, instead of creeping in at the cabin window with his gloves on." The stewards were dirty, and the stewardess too smart to attend to the comforts of the passengers.
Down at the "Old Lake End" the steamer for Mobile receives the burden. The gong clangs in her engine-room, the walking-beam silently stirs, there is a hiss of water underneath, the gang-plank is in, the wet hawser-ends whip through the hawse-holes, she moves; clang goes the gong again she glides or is it the crowded wharf that is gliding? No. Snatch the kisses! snatch them! Adieu! Adieu!
The latter ship was struggling along, her bows plunging into the seas to the hawse-holes, while the former had a swift, easy motion through the troughs, and along the summits of the waves, her flattened sails aiding in steadying her in the heavy lurches that unavoidably accompanied such a movement.
The poor old bilander had made herself such a hole in the shingle that she rolled no more, but only lifted at the stern and groaned, as the quiet waves swept under her. The beach was swarming with men, who gave her a cheer, and flung their hats up; and in two or three minutes as many gangways of timber and rope were rigged to her hawse-holes, or fore-chains, or almost anywhere.
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