Still I improved. As long as I kept the Elsinore before the wind
they could not fish. I experimented. Once before it, by means of a
winged-out spanker coupled with patient and careful steering, I could
keep her before it. This I did, hour by hour one of my men relieving
another at the wheel. As a result all fishing ceased.
Margaret was holding the first dog-watch, four to six. Henry was at
the wheel steering. Wada and Louis were below cooking the evening
meal over the big coal-stove and the oil-burners. I had just come up
from below and was standing beside the sounding-machine, not half a
dozen feet from Henry at the wheel. Some obscure sound from the
ventilator must have attracted me, for I was gazing at it when the
thing happened.
But first, the ventilator. This is a steel shaft that leads up from
the coal-carrying bowels of the ship beneath the lazarette and that
wins to the outside-world via the after-wall of the chart-house. In
fact, it occupies the hollow inside of the double walls of the
afterwall of the chart-house.
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