Читать книгу Round the Galley Fire онлайн

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I waited until he had partially quenched his excitement by a long pull at his tumbler, and then asked him again how it happened that his vessel had been boarded by a bailiff.

“I’ll tell you,” he answered. “The wessel was a brig of 300 tons. Coming home she plumped into a schooner. It was the schooner’s fault; we sung out to her to get out of the road; instead of doing which she ported her helm as if to provoke us, and in we went, doing her a deal of damage and carrying away our own jibboom. Well, we arrived in port and discharged, and then filled up again with coal. It was Toosday afternoon, the sky middling dirty, and a fresh breeze of wind blowing. We hauled out and lay at a mooring buoy, waiting for the tide to serve. I was talking to the captain when I took notice of a boat coming along, rowed by a couple o’ watermen, and a chap in a chimbley-pot hat sitting in the starn sheets.

“‘Is that boat for us?’ says the captain, looking.

“‘Why,’ I says, ‘it looks as if she meant to run us down. Is it a wager? Bust me if hever I saw watermen pull like that afore!’