Читать книгу List, Ye Landsmen!. A Romance of Incident онлайн

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“She was a lump of a vessel painted yellow, with a snake-like curl of cutwater at the head of the stem, and a great deal of gilt work about her headboards and figurehead. I knew her for a Spaniard the instant I had her fair. She had heavy channels and a wide spread of lower rigging. Her yards were across, but pointed as though she had ridden to a gale, and the canvas was clumsily furled as if rolled up hurriedly and in a time of confusion. But I need not tease you with a minute description of her,” said he. “It was easy to guess how it happened that she was in this amazing situation. Perfectly clear it was to me that she had sighted this island at night, or in dirty weather, when the land was too close aboard for a shift of the helm to send her clear. Once in the harbor her commander, in the teeth of a dead inshore wind, could not get out. What, then, was to be done? Here was a place of shelter in which he might ride until a shift of wind permitted him to proceed on his voyage. So, as I make the story run to my own satisfaction, he let go his anchor; but scarcely was this done when it came on to blow, the canvas was hastily furled to save the strain, but she dragged nevertheless. A second anchor was let go, and still she dragged—and why? Because, as a cast of the lead would have told the Spanish captain, the ground was as hard as rock and as smooth as marble, and there was nothing for the anchors to grip. Dragging with her head to sea and her stern at the cliff’s huge front, the ship floats foot by foot toward the cave, threading it with mathematical precision. The roof of the cave slants rearward, and as she drifts into the big hole her royal-mastheads graze and take the roof; the masts are crushed away at the crosstrees, otherwise all is well with the ship. She strands gently, and is steadied by her topmast heads pressing against the roof. Thus is she held in a vise of her own manufacture, and so she lies snug as live callipee and callipash in their top and bottom armor. That must be the solution, Fielding.”