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"Round the south head sweeps the first boat, the second following more leisurely, for she is only a 'pickup' or relief, in case the first is 'fluked' and the crew are tossed high in air, with their boat crushed into matchwood, or meets with some other disaster.
The hand who picked the shortest piece of matchwood had to accept the position of having to take the first two hours; then all the rest turned in. The mate was always called at the turn of the tide to swing the vessel, so that the cable did not foul the anchor. This was done by a skilful manipulation of the yards and fore topmast staysail.
In every rocky fissure, where angry waves spout cliff-high and burst in clouds of spray; in every rugged inlet, where the far-flung roaring seas boil furiously, timbers and deck-hamper of vessels driven on a lee-shore churned ceaselessly, pounding themselves to matchwood. Throughout January, and till February was far advanced, this bitter easterly gale blew fiercely.
No stone wall had ever been known to resist its downward swoop; there were no trees tough enough to stay it; it would splinter them into matchwood and defile their leafy honors in the dust. This irascible and implacable brute this incarnate thunderbolt this monster of the upper deep, I had seen reposing in the shade of an adjacent tree, dreaming dreams of conquest and glory.
Everything depended on whether the servant was in the hall. I had put Stumm to sleep for a bit, but I couldn't flatter myself he would long be quiet, and when he came to he would kick the locked door to matchwood. I must get out of the house without a minute's delay, and if the door was shut and the old man gone to bed I was done. I met him at the foot of the stairs, carrying a candle.
Most of the lighter furniture had been already reduced to matchwood; the glass doors of the bookcase were starred or shivered; precious Egyptian pottery and glass were strewn in fragments on the carpets, and even the mummy, though it still smiled with the same enigmatic cheerfulness, seemed to have suffered severely from the Professorial hoofs.
As to our desperate run from Lattimore to the place where it came to an end in a junk-heap which had been once an engine, a car reduced to matchwood, a broken trestle, and a chaos of crushed hopes, and of the return to our homes thereafter, no further details need be set forth.
The great stick was torn from his grasp and broken in two as though it had been matchwood, to be flung aside as the now infuriated beast charged for his adversary's throat.
They no longer inspired confidence, but begot apprehension; and it was with grim satisfaction that I saw the carriage of one and another smashed into matchwood by a whooping shot and bundled out of the line.
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