Читать книгу Round the Galley Fire онлайн

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“It would have made a hangel growl to hear the captain, all through fear, placing this bailiff afore the werry hurricane that was blowing, and thinking of him only whom he’d ha’ gladly drownded a few hours earlier, instead of the wessel and the lives aboard her. But reasoning was out of the question. The brig was just a smother of froth, the gale roaring like thunder, the seas as high as our maintop, and the old hooker shivering with every upward heave, as if she must leave all the lower part of her behind her. It was a job to get the vessel round, but we managed it, and at half-past five o’clock in the morning we fetched the harbour we had started from and brought up, nothing having carried away but the bailiff’s chimbley-pot.”

“And what was the result of all this?” said I.

“Why,” said he, with a loud rumbling laugh, “the skipper had to find out what purging in hopen court means. He was brought up afore an old gentleman, who lectured him for about half an hour, said that the law was meant to be respected and that it would be a bad job for any man as sneered at it; and after having talked out all that lay in his mind, he up and fines the captain ten pounds and fifty shillings costs. It served him right. He’d no business to bring that bailiff back. But he was hoperated on by the fear o’ words, and depend upon it the man who allows that sort of alarm to wisit him is not a fit person to carry a bailiff to sea.”