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Updated: June 17, 2025
Nothing is more interesting to a landsman than the manner in which a sailor handles huge, dripping hawsers or cables and with a few deft turns makes then fast to a pier-head or spile, in such a way that the ship's winches, warping the huge structure to or from the dock, do not cause the slightest give or slip to the rope and yet, a moment later, with a few quick motions, the line is cast off, tightened up anew, or paid out as required.
This voice, like that of a strong man knowing his own mind in an assembly of excited and unstable counsellors, had long been raised with a persistence which at last seemed to command all others, and the steamer moved steadily towards it; for it was the siren fog-horn at the pier-head.
"You have taken precautions?" he asked, and felt himself flushing at the dishonesty of the question. "I have posted Beesley in charge, and sent the chief boatman off to the pier-head to keep a close watch on the steamer. She sails at seven-thirty to-morrow, and though I never heard a hint against her skipper, it's only right to be careful.
Of course I landed there. On the pier-head, I recognised Lefébure, a sea-captain and an old friend of mine; he had given up navigation in order to marry a mulattress there, who keeps a tobacco-shop. I said to him 'Hullo, how are you? He embraces me and answers that he is very dull.
However, we have had a lively time of it, anyhow. We have had quite a run of visitors. The Governor-General came, and we received him with a salute of nine guns. He brought his family with him. I observed that carpets were spread from the pier-head to his carriage for him to walk on, though I have seen him walk there without any carpet when he was not on business.
Groping his way, and still attended by his amazing good luck, the Dutchman, where he had expected rocks, came plump on a pier of hewn masonry. At the pier-head, which loomed high above them, a man struck a light and displayed a lantern; and, looking up, the crew were aware of many people standing there and chattering in the dusk chattering in the low soft tone peculiar to the Islanders.
It would be difficult to say whether the shouts of the multitudes who stood on the pier-head or the shrieks of the wrecked people were loudest. Instantly every exertion was made to save them. Boats were launched, ropes were thrown, buoys were cast into the sea, and many of the people were saved, but many were also drowned before assistance reached them.
The pier-head was crowded with people who had come there to enjoy the sea-breeze without the inconvenience of being tossed about in a vessel. The town rises on a steep hill from the shore, with woods on both sides, and looks very picturesque. To the west is the pretty village of Binstead, with its church peeping out among the trees.
He was leaning on the rail with his chin on his arms and the brim of his Panama hat drawn down to conceal his eyes. On the pier-head, from which we now were drawing rapidly away, the consul made a megaphone of his hands. "That's HIM," he called. "That's Jones."
There was a chain down the middle of the pier in the winter to prevent people from being washed off, and she had stood clinging to this, and seen a great ship, with one ragged sail fluttering from a broken mast, carried before the wind right on to the pier-head, which it struck with a crash that displaced great blocks of granite as if they had been sponge-cakes; and when it struck, the doomed sailors on its decks sent up an awful shriek, to which those on the pier responded.
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