Then the eyelids raised, the lips set
again with their habitual discipline, and the colour slowly returned
to his face. It was as if he had been away for a time and just
returned. But I had seen, and guessed her secret.
And yet it was this same Captain West, seven hours later, who
chastened the proud sailor spirit of Mr. Pike. It was in the second
dog-watch that evening, a dark night, and the watch was pulling away
on the main deck. I had just come out of the chart-house door and
seen Captain West pace by me, hands in pockets, toward the break of
the poop. Abruptly, from the mizzen-mast, came a snap of breakage
and crash of fabric. At the same instant the men fell backward and
sprawled over the deck.
A moment of silence followed, and then Captain West's voice went out:
"What carried away, Mr. Pike?"
"The halyards, sir," came the reply out of the darkness.
There was a pause. Again Captain West's voice went out.
"Next time slack away on your sheet first."
Now Mr. Pike is incontestably a splendid seaman.
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