"
"It come wunst on me when things couldn't `a' looked more
onready fur it," said Silas.
"How was that?" asked Mr. Nugent, settling himself a little
more comfortably on the hard thwart. "If it's a story, let's
have it. This is a good time to spin a yarn."
"Very well," said old Silas. "I'll spin her."
The bare-legged boy whose duty it was to stay forward and
mind the jib came aft as soon as he smelt a story, and took a
nautical position, which was duly studied by Mr. Nugent, on a bag
of ballast in the bottom of the boat.
"It's nigh on to fifteen year ago," said Silas, "that I was
on the bark Mary Auguster, bound for Sydney, New South Wales,
with a cargo of canned goods. We was somewhere about longitood a
hundred an' seventy, latitood nothin', an' it was the twenty-
second o' December, when we was ketched by a reg'lar typhoon
which blew straight along, end on, fur a day an' a half. It blew
away the storm-sails. It blew away every yard, spar, shroud, an'
every strand o' riggin', an' snapped the masts off close to the
deck. It blew away all the boats. It blew away the cook's
caboose, an' everythin' else on deck. It blew off the hatches,
an' sent 'em spinnin' in the air about a mile to leeward. An'
afore it got through, it washed away the cap'n an' all the crew
'cept me an' two others. These was Tom Simmons, the second mate,
an' Andy Boyle, a chap from the Adirondack Mount'ins, who'd never
been to sea afore. As he was a landsman, he ought, by rights, to
'a' been swep' off by the wind an' water, consid'rin' that the
cap'n an' sixteen good seamen had gone a'ready.
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