"Quartermaster, keep her away a bit"--and dived into the cabin to make his
report.
Captain Deadeye was a staid, stiff--rumped, wall--eyed, old first
lieutenantish--looking veteran, with his coat of a regular Rodney cut,
broad skirts, long waist, and standup collar, over which dangled either a
queue, or a marlinspike with a tuft of oakum at the end of it,--it would
have puzzled Old Nick to say which. His lower spars were cased in tight
unmentionables of what had once been white kerseymere, and long boots, the
coal--skuttle tops of which served as scuppers to carry off the drainings
from his coat--flaps in bad weather; he was, in fact, the "last of the
sea--monsters," but, like all his tribe, as brave as steel, and, when put
to it, as alert as a cat.
He no sooner heard Splinter's report, than he sprung up the ladder,
brushing the tumbler of swizzle he had just brewed clean out of the fiddle
into the lap of Mr Saveall, the purser, who had dined with him, and nearly
extinguishing the said purser, by his arm striking the bowl of the pipe he
was smoking, thereby forcing the shank half--way down his throat.
"My glass, Wilson," to his steward.
"She is close to, sir; you can see her plainly without it," said Mr
Treenail, the second lieutenant, from the weather nettings, where he was
reconnoitring.
After a long look through his starboard blinker, (this other skylight had
been shut up ever since Aboukir,) Deadeye gave orders to "clear away the
weather--bow gun;" and as it was now getting too dark for flags to be seen
distinctly, he desired that three lanterns might be got ready for hoisting
vertically in the main--rigging.
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