A Sailor's Sweetheart V1 (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE DEATH OF THE BOATSWAIN. I Came down from aloft and told the boatswain we should have some dirty weather before the morning, and as there was a little daylight left we had another good look at the warps, and, being satisfied, went about to freshen ourselves up with a wash down. Johnson was askin' me just now, sir, said Sinnet, as he rubbed himself dry, whether I thought you'd object to their having a little jollification this evening before turning in. You know what sailors are, Mr. Lee ? They want their song and their yarn, and a smoke, and what they calls ashore a spell o' free and easy. So far from objecting, I fell into the scheme at once: we had escaped a dreadful peril, the brig was afloat, we had all worked VOL. III. H desperately hard, and why should not we celebrate our good fortune by a song ? So I called to the men and told them that I should not only be glad to listen to a song from them, but to give them a song myself, but on condition that I served out the grog, and that no man asked for more than I chose to give him. This was agreed to, and the cabin being hot, we lashed the royal and top-gallant yards together, slung them from the gaff, opened the sails and made an awning of them over the top of the deck-house; we then brought up some chairs, a bottle of grog, a box of cigars, and made the cabin lamp fast to the yards over our heads. I contrived this arrangement for Nelly's sake. I wished her to be present, as I knew the men would value her company; and besides, they were ah1 three steady men and true sailors, and there was nothing to fear from them in the way of language so long as I remained skipper of the bottle; but she could not have endured the tobacco smoke in the cabin. So there we were with the sails over ou...