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- 1682
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1633
- text
- make of this, said nothing. Then the other: ‘We are not the only
impressed ones, Billy. There’s a gang of us. Couldn’t you--help--at a
pinch?’
‘What do you mean?’ demanded Billy, here shaking off his drouse.
‘Hist, hist!’ the hurried whisper now growing husky; ‘see here,’ and the
man held up two small objects faintly twinkling in the night light;
‘see, they are yours, Billy, if you’ll only----’
But Billy broke in, and in his resentful eagerness to deliver himself,
his vocal infirmity somewhat intruded. ‘D-D-Damme, I don’t know what you
are d-driving at, or what you mean, but you had better g-g-go where you
belong!’ For the moment the fellow, as confounded, did not stir; and
Billy, springing to his feet, said, ‘If you d-don’t start, I’ll
t-t-t-oss you back over the r-rail!’ There was no mistaking this, and
the mysterious emissary decamped, disappearing in the direction of the
mainmast in the shadow of the booms.
‘Hallo, what’s the matter?’ here came growling from a forecastleman
awakened from his deck-doze by Billy’s raised voice. And as the
foretopman reappeared, and was recognised by him, ‘Ah, _Beauty_,
is it you? Well, something must have been the matter, for you
st-st-stuttered.’
‘Oh,’ rejoined Billy, now mastering the impediment; ‘I found an
afterguardsman in our part of the ship here, and I bid him be off where
he belongs.’
‘And is that all you did about it, foretopman?’ gruffly demanded
another, an irascible old fellow of brick-coloured visage and hair, and
who was known to his associate forecastlemen as _Red Pepper_. ‘Such
sneaks I should like to marry to the gunner’s daughter!’ by that
expression meaning that he would like to subject them to disciplinary
castigation over a gun.
However, Billy’s rendering of the matter satisfactorily accounted to
these inquirers for the brief commotion, since of all the sections of a
ship’s company the forecastlemen, veterans for the most part, and
bigoted in their sea-prejudices, are the most jealous in resenting
territorial encroachments, especially on the part of any of the
afterguard, of whom they have but a sorry opinion, chiefly landsmen,
never going aloft except to reef or furl the mainsail, and in no wise
competent to handle a marling-spike or turn in a _dead-eye_, say.
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- title
- Chunk 2