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Updated: August 12, 2024
Soon we saw the studding sails and all kites come down by the run and her yards braced up sharp on the same tack as ours. We also hauled by the wind. At sunrise she was four points on our weather bow, distant about four miles. We soon perceived that she could outsail our brig and if the wind held would escape. Gradually she drew away from us until she was hull down.
The kair is I believe a species of mimosa; it is a hard wood, growing in a thick scrubby form, with small pointed leaves, a yellowish sort of flower, and sharp thorns studding its branches; it is a favourite resort for pig, and although it is difficult to beat on account of the thorns, tigers are not unfrequently found among the gloomy recesses of a good kair scrub.
"Twenty million pounds, a full third of which has been spent upon precious stones for studding the walls, and gates, and pillars!" Ralph gasped in amaze. "Twenty million pounds!" He repeated the words much after the manner of a man who, recovering from a swoon, says, "Where am I?" They talked together for a few moments of the how of the financing of such a costly undertaking.
At last they were fortunate enough to catch the southeast trade, but it was so languid at first that the ship barely moved through the water, though they set every stitch, and studding sails alow and aloft, till really she was acres of canvas. While she was so creeping along, a man in the mizzentop noticed an enormous shark gliding steadily in her wake.
As he fell headlong on the water at the end of each huge leap, a series of circles were sent far over the still surface, which lay as smooth as a mirror; for the breeze, although enough to keep the royals and top-gallant studding sails extended, was hardly as yet felt below.
Nelson went so far as to try to jockey his old friend out of first place by ordering the Mars to pass him, but Collingwood set his studding sails and kept his lead. Possibly it was then he made the remark that he wished Nelson would make no more signals, as they all knew what they had to do, rather than after Nelson's famous final message: "England expects that every man will do his duty."
Moreover, being discovered on the starboard bow, reaching out from the direction wherein land was known to be, with her yards artfully ill braced, her canvas badly set, her running gear hanging all in bights, and her speed retarded by a topmast studding- sail being dropped overboard and towed from her lee quarter less than that of the veriest Noah's ark of a north-country collier, she was at once set down as a harmless coaster, and no further notice taken of her.
After running for two hours without obstruction, we were once more mortified in perceiving that the ice, in very extensive and unusually heavy floes, closed in with the land a little to the westward of Cape Hay, and our channel of clear water between the ice and the land gradually diminished in breadth, till at length it became necessary to take in the studding sails, and to haul to the wind to look about us.
In little more than half an hour afterwards, Mesty, who had been peeping out of the shutters, suddenly threw them open with a loud laugh. The Aurora was under way, with studding sails below and aloft, standing out of the roads. Jack and Gascoigne got up, threw off the splints, and danced about in their shirts.
No doubt they were right, for I went back, in spite of their protest, and peeped into the nest, and found four gleaming white eggs studding the bottom like pearls. Alas! when I visited the place two weeks later, the little domicile had been raided, the half-decayed walls having been broken down.
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