D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 95: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

86 Wind and Wave Wait Not. her elasticity saved her. She was so sinuous that she — seemed a water snake. The men breathed only at in- tervals, when they emerged from ‘the weight of water, like sO many grampuses, rising mid-high to snap at flying-fish. “It was a big bait,” thought the musketeer. “To try to secure the Brotherhood of the Sea for my master; but I ama luckless angler, who will be dragged to the bottom with my willing catch! It’s a poor lookout for the courtier waiting me at the Petrel! He will not set the seal or my old meed as a model of punctuality! A fine representative of Cardinal Richelieu, who is wont to say: ‘Non-punctuality is a kind of falsehood! This time I shall be an eternity behindhand! Ah, can ghosts redeem debts ?” Suddenly his very mind, entangled in this sarcastic mood characteristic of him, leaped out of it all, and spurred his body to action. it a man of thoughts, any violent movement was a relief. By the twisting and wriggling, the seams had opened in a score of places, though the timbers kept unsplit. The low waist was long since full of water, but at each cant some spilt out. But now, as in digging a well, the spade strikes a hidden fount, it welled up in the middle like a water volcano. “A leak! She has sprung a leak!” was the low wail from the quivering mouths in those white countenances. Pedro stood knee-deep there, unable to retain footing on the rounded hatch-wale, but erecting: the few but imperative operations as if on dry ground. Three or four lightly-built fellows,.knife in teeth or hatchet swinging from a lanyard at the wrist, were furl- ing up flaps of sail or cutting away ropes jammed in the blocks and apt to work mischief. With buckets and salt shovels the rest were bailing out the ever-flowing well, indefatigable as the Danaides, but as useless. ‘They unfortunately believed in their skipper, and his prophecy that this stroke was not the lightest of them dashed their ardor. There was only one boat, and that was dragging by a rope at the stern. The French cavalier had no bucket to seize up. Be- side him, however, was a water-breaker, lashed on two Eomichooksco