- end_line
- 3785
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:05.590Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3708
- text
- As running down channel at evening, Israel walked the crowded main-deck
of the seventy-four, continually brushed by a thousand hurrying
wayfarers, as if he were in some great street in London, jammed with
artisans, just returning from their day’s labor, novel and painful
emotions were his. He found himself dropped into the naval mob without
one friend; nay, among enemies, since his country’s enemies were his
own, and against the kith and kin of these very beings around him, he
himself had once lifted a fatal hand. The martial bustle of a great
man-of-war, on her first day out of port, was indescribably jarring to
his present mood. Those sounds of the human multitude disturbing the
solemn natural solitudes of the sea, mysteriously afflicted him. He
murmured against that untowardness which, after condemning him to long
sorrows on the land, now pursued him with added griefs on the deep. Why
should a patriot, leaping for the chance again to attack the oppressor,
as at Bunker Hill, now be kidnapped to fight that oppressor’s battles
on the endless drifts of the Bunker Hills of the billows? But like many
other repiners, Israel was perhaps a little premature with upbraidings
like these.
Plying on between Scilly and Cape Clear, the Unprincipled—which vessel
somewhat outsailed her consorts—fell in, just before dusk, with a large
revenue cutter close to, and showing signals of distress. At the
moment, no other sail was in sight.
Cursing the necessity of pausing with a strong fair wind at a juncture
like this, the officer-of-the-deck shortened sail, and hove to; hailing
the cutter, to know what was the matter. As he hailed the small craft
from the lofty poop of the bristling seventy-four, this lieutenant
seemed standing on the top of Gibraltar, talking to some lowland
peasant in a hut. The reply was, that in a sudden flaw of wind, which
came nigh capsizing them, not an hour since, the cutter had lost all
four foremost men by the violent jibing of a boom. She wanted help to
get back to port.
“You shall have one man,” said the officer-of-the-deck, morosely.
“Let him be a good one then, for heaven’s sake,” said he in the cutter;
“I ought to have at least two.”
During this talk, Israel’s curiosity had prompted him to dart up the
ladder from the main-deck, and stand right in the gangway above,
looking out on the strange craft. Meantime the order had been given to
drop a boat. Thinking this a favorable chance, he stationed himself so
that he should be the foremost to spring into the boat; though crowds
of English sailors, eager as himself for the same opportunity to escape
from foreign service, clung to the chains of the as yet imperfectly
disciplined man-of-war. As the two men who had been lowered in the boat
hooked her, when afloat, along to the gangway, Israel dropped like a
comet into the stern-sheets, stumbled forward, and seized an oar. In a
moment more, all the oarsmen were in their places, and with a few
strokes the boat lay alongside the cutter.
“Take which of them you please,” said the lieutenant in command,
addressing the officer in the revenue-cutter, and motioning with his
hand to his boat’s crew, as if they were a parcel of carcasses of
mutton, of which the first pick was offered to some customer. “Quick
and choose. Sit down, men”—to the sailors. “Oh, you are in a great
hurry to get rid of the king’s service, ain’t you? Brave chaps
indeed!—Have you chosen your man?”
All this while the ten faces of the anxious oarsmen looked with mute
longings and appealings towards the officer of the cutter; every face
turned at the same angle, as if managed by one machine. And so they
were. One motive.
“I take the freckled chap with the yellow hair—him,” pointing to
Israel.
Nine of the upturned faces fell in sullen despair, and ere Israel could
spring to his feet, he felt a violent thrust in his rear from the toes
of one of the disappointed behind him.
“Jump, dobbin!” cried the officer of the boat.
But Israel was already on board. Another moment, and the boat and
cutter parted. Ere long, night fell, and the man-of-war and her
consorts were out of sight.
- title
- Chunk 1