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Updated: August 14, 2024
The vessel to which we have referred was, to all appearance, in a situation of as extreme hazard as that of a drowning man clinging to a single rope-yarn; yet, in reality, she was more secure from descending to the abyss below than many gallantly careering on the waters, their occupants dismissing all fear, and only calculating upon a quick arrival into port.
"I can swim for both," he said, tying a piece of rope-yarn tight round his waist, for he had long before cast off coat, vest, and braces; "but you ought to be ashamed of yourself, a man come to your time o' life, an' not able to swim!"
Every splinter, every rope-yarn of her groaned again under this savage treatment; but so splendid was her construction that she never made a drop of water more than just sufficient to sweeten the limbers. It was with great and genuine satisfaction that we saw it at last safely lowered on deck and secured.
Oswald sprang to the pumps when he heard the carpenter's report. 'Try again, Abel it cannot be: cut away that line; hand us here a dry rope-yarn. Once more the well was sounded by Oswald, and the result was the same. 'We must rig the pumps, my lads, said the mate, endeavouring to conceal his own fears; 'half this water must have found its way in when she was on her beam-ends.
Most of the planking of the bulwarks was also gone, burst outward by the weight of the water on deck. Only the normal quantity of water was found in the well on sounding, and not even a rope-yarn was gone from aloft.
The natives seemed to take little notice of the boat's departure, probably they thought she had gone for a short distance only, and would soon return. The captain, with the carpenter and his mates, and a boat's crew, now went on shore. Dick and I were at work on the bowsprit, I sitting by him, holding the rope-yarn and grease-pot.
Don't you remember in that blessed letter she sent me, just before we sailed, how she tells me to look well after you, an' sew the frogs on your sea-coat when they git loose, for she knows you'll never do it yourself, but will be fixin' it up with a wooden skewer or a bit o' rope-yarn.
Four buzzards wheeled above it, gorged and slow; the harbour lay before him like a green mirror, so still that the ship was reflected in it down to the last rope-yarn. Over all, the sun, colourless and furnace-hot, burned in a sky of steel. There was insolence in the scorched slopes that shouldered up from the bay, a threatening permanence in the saw-edged sky-line.
And to me, every rope-yarn of the Parki's was invested with interest. The outlandish fashion of her shrouds, the collars of her stays, the stirrups, seizings, Flemish-horses, gaskets, all the wilderness of her rigging, bore unequivocal traces of her origin.
Imagining that it must have been wet from the quantity of water shipped over all, the carpenter disengaged the rope-yarn from the rule, drew another from the junk lying on the deck, which the seamen were working up, and then carefully proceeded to plumb the well. He hauled it up, and, looking at it for some moments aghast, exclaimed, "Seven feet of water in the hold, by God."
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