. . the Lallah Rookh." Mr. Pike paused to consider.
"Oh, say around a hundred feet."
"I saw it myself. One of the green hands, a tramp--and he must
already have got a taste of Mr. Harding--fell off the lower-topsail-
yard. I was only a little girl, but it looked like certain death,
for he was falling from the weather side of the yard straight down on
deck. But he fell into the belly of the mainsail, breaking his fall,
turned a somersault, and landed on his feet on deck and unhurt. And
he landed right alongside of Mr. Harding, facing him. I don't know
which was the more astonished, but I think Mr. Harding was, for he
stood there petrified. He had expected the man to be killed. Not so
the man. He took one look at Mr. Harding, then made a wild jump for
the rigging and climbed right back up to that topsail-yard.
Miss West and the mate laughed so heartily that they scarcely heard
me say:
"Astonishing! Think of the jar to the man's nerves, falling to
apparent death that way."
"He'd been jarred harder by Silas Harding, I guess," was Mr.
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