List, Ye Landsmen! A Romance of IncidentRussell, William Clark
General
List, Ye Landsmen! A Romance of Incident
Russell, William Clark
English fiction -- 19th century; Sea stories
“Pull, you toyfils! Shoomp und run!” bawled Bol, in his hurricane note,
to the two Spaniards, who were loafing near the galley, lazily looking
on at the work that was going forward. “Dis vhas not der islandt--dis
vhas no shipwreck. Shoomp, or I make you fly mit a sharge of goonpowder
in der slack of yer breeks.”
The royals were sheeted home; trysail, flying jib, staysails set; for it
was a quartering wind, and there was scarce a cloth that we could throw
abroad but could do serviceable work. They called this sort of sailing
in our time _going along all fluking_, the weather-clew of the mainsail
up and the lee-clew dully lifting its weight of blocks and hawser-like
sheets and thick frame of foot and bolt-rope.
“Set all stu’n’-sails,” cried Greaves; and soon out to windward soared
to their several yardarms and to their boom-ends those wide, overhanging
spaces of sail, clothing the brig in surf-white cloths from the royal
mast heads to the very heave of the brine, when she rolled her
swinging-boom to windward.
“Pipe to dinner!” called Greaves.
The sweet, clear strains of Yan Bol’s whistle found a hundred echoes in
the hollows on high. Aurora gazed upward, as though looking for the
birds. The men had worked hard, and were pale with heat and sweat. They
had worked with a will in making sail. Even the Dutchmen had sprang
along and aloft with a bluejacket’s activity; for we were homeward
bound! a cry in every marine heart magical in its inspiration of swift
and eager labor. With dripping brows the men stood looking at the
receding island, while Yan Bol whistled them to dinner; and when the
burly Dutch boatswain let fall the pipe upon his breast to the length of
its laniard, all hands, moved by feelings which made every throat one
for the moment, roared out a long, wild cheer of farewell to the island,
flourishing caps and arms to it, as though its heights were crowded with
friends who could see and hear them.
“Look at Galloon!” cried Greaves.
The dog was on the taffrail, and every bark he sent at the island was
like a loud hurrah, with the significance the noise took from the
wagging of the creature’s tail and the set of the whole figure of him.
“He knows we are homeward bound,” said Greaves.
“And that the dollars are aboard,” said I.
Miss Aurora went to the dog, caressed, and talked to him. The lad
Jimmy’s head showed at the galley door. Greaves hailed him to know when
dinner would be ready.
“Another twenty minutes, master.”
“Heave the log, Fielding, and let’s get the pace at the start.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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