Читать книгу Frank Brown, Sea Apprentice онлайн

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The keen wind made him shiver, but so great was his wonder at the scene around, the numbers of vessels, from the mighty ocean steamships to the swift ferry-boats and thronging small craft of varying rigs, and the manner in which the Sealark threaded her way among them, that all made up a panorama which kept him almost stupid with surprise.

But he was not allowed to stand staring about him; the harsh voice of the mate shouting, “Get along there forrard, boy, and lend a hand,” started him off in the direction indicated by the mate’s finger, where he found everybody busy at a task which seemed to him one of most bewildering complication. Not a word that passed did he understand any more than he knew what was being done or why, and if ever anybody felt a useless fool he did.

All hands were engaged in rigging out the jibboom, a great spar that protrudes over the bowsprit from the forepart of the ship, and is secured by a number of stays, guys, and chains, which, hanging loosely about it as it was gradually hove out into its permanent place, looked to him as if the tangle could never be cleared. Everything that was said or shouted was unintelligible—for all he knew they might as well have been talking in another language, and he began to feel quite dazed as well as foolish. And everybody seemed offended with him because he did not understand, bad words were freely flung at him, for whatever he did seemed to be wrong, and altogether he became pretty miserable. For, as I have said, he was naturally a bright, smart boy, and he felt angry and hurt at his inability to understand what was said to him or to do anything that he was ordered.