Where
the boarding-house masters got them was beyond imagining. A number
of them were shanghaied, that was certain. You should have seen them
when they were first sent aloft." Again she laughed. "It was better
than circus clowns. And scarcely had the tug cast us off, outside
the Heads, when it began to blow up and we began to shorten down.
And then our mates performed miracles. You remember Mr. Harding--
Silas Harding?"
"Don't I though!" Mr. Pike proclaimed enthusiastically. "He was some
man, and he must have been an old man even then."
"He was, and a terrible man," she concurred, and added, almost
reverently: "And a wonderful man." She turned her face to me. "He
was our mate. The men were sea-sick and miserable and green. But
Mr. Harding got the sail off the Lallah Rookh just the same. What I
wanted to tell you was this:
"I was on the poop, just like I am now, and Mr. Harding had a lot of
those miserable sick men putting gaskets on the main-lower-topsail.
How far would that be above the deck, Mr. Pike?"
"Let me see .
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