In this last he
suspected knockout drops. That he had been shanghaied was beyond
suspicion.
Laboriously he sat up on the side of his bunk and in doing so
became aware of a sailor asleep in the crib opposite. His
stertorous breathing stirred a doubt in Jeff's mind. Perhaps the
crimps had taken him too.
The ship was rolling a good deal, but by a succession of tacks
Jeff staggered to the scuttle and climbed the hatchway to the
deck. A wintry sun was shining, and for a few moments he stood
blinking in the light.
She was a three-masted schooner and was plunging forward into the
choppy seas outside the jaws of the harbor. He whiffed the salt
tang of the air and tasted the flying spray. An ebb tide was
lifting the vessel forward on a freshening wind, and trim as a
greyhound she slipped through the cat's-paws.
A thickset, powerful figure paced to and fro on the quarter-deck,
occasionally bellowing an order in a tremendous voice like the
roar of a bull. He was getting canvas set for the fresh breeze of
the open seas that was catching him astern, and the sailors were
jumping to obey his orders. The pounding sails and the singing
cordage, the rattling blocks and the whipping ropes, would have
told Jeff they were scudding along fast, even if the heeling of
the schooner and its swift forward leaps had not made it plain.
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