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- 10251
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.843Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 10187
- text
- “Take that, and along with you,” cried the mate, laying the rope once
across his back, but lightly.
“By heaven!” cried Harry, wincing—not with the blow, but the insult:
and then making a dash at the mate, who, holding out his long arm, kept
him lazily at bay, and laughed at him, till, had I not feared a broken
head, I should infallibly have pitched my boy’s bulk into the officer.
“Captain Riga!” cried Harry.
“Don’t call upon _him”_ said the mate; “he’s asleep, and won’t wake up
till we strike Yankee soundings again. Up you go!” he added,
flourishing the rope’s end.
Harry looked round among the grinning tars with a glance of terrible
indignation and agony; and then settling his eye on me, and seeing
there no hope, but even an admonition of obedience, as his only
resource, he made one bound into the rigging, and was up at the
main-top in a trice. I thought a few more springs would take him to the
truck, and was a little fearful that in his desperation he might then
jump overboard; for I had heard of delirious greenhorns doing such
things at sea, and being lost forever. But no; he stopped short, and
looked down from the top. Fatal glance! it unstrung his every fiber;
and I saw him reel, and clutch the shrouds, till the mate shouted out
for him not to squeeze the tar out of the ropes. “Up you go, sir.” But
Harry said nothing.
“You Max,” cried the mate to the Dutch sailor, “spring after him, and
help him; you understand?”
Max went up the rigging hand over hand, and brought his red head with a
bump against the base of Harry’s back. Needs must when the devil
drives; and higher and higher, with Max bumping him at every step, went
my unfortunate friend. At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin
signal halyards—, hardly bigger than common twine—were flying in the
wind. “Unreeve!” cried the mate.
I saw Harry’s arm stretched out—his legs seemed shaking in the rigging,
even to us, down on deck; and at last, thank heaven! the deed was done.
He came down pale as death, with bloodshot eyes, and every limb
quivering. From that moment he never put foot in rattlin; never mounted
above the bulwarks; and for the residue of the voyage, at least, became
an altered person.
At the time, he went to the mate—since he could not get speech of the
captain—and conjured him to intercede with Riga, that his name might be
stricken off from the list of the ship’s company, so that he might make
the voyage as a steerage passenger; for which privilege, he bound
himself to pay, as soon as he could dispose of some things of his in
New York, over and above the ordinary passage-money. But the mate gave
him a blunt denial; and a look of wonder at his effrontery. Once a
sailor on board a ship, and _always_ a sailor for that voyage, at
least; for within so brief a period, no officer can bear to associate
on terms of any thing like equality with a person whom he has ordered
about at his pleasure.
Harry then told the mate solemnly, that he might do what he pleased,
but go aloft again he _could_ not, and _would_ not. He would do any
thing else but that.
This affair sealed Harry’s fate on board of the Highlander; the crew
now reckoned him fair play for their worst jibes and jeers, and he led
a miserable life indeed.
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