When we mustered the
crew there was one man missing. Swept overboard, of course, without
being either seen or heard, poor devil! and I only wonder more of us
didn't go.
"Always something like that. Always. I heard an old mate tell Captain
Colchester once that it had come to this with him, that he was afraid to
open his mouth to give any sort of order. She was as much of a terror
in harbour as at sea. You could never be certain what would hold her. On
the slightest provocation she would start snapping ropes, cables, wire
hawsers, like carrots. She was heavy, clumsy, unhandy--but that does not
quite explain that power for mischief she had. You know, somehow, when I
think of her I can't help remembering what we hear of incurable lunatics
breaking loose now and then."
He looked at me inquisitively. But, of course, I couldn't admit that a
ship could be mad.
"In the ports where she was known," he went on,' "they dreaded the sight
of her. She thought nothing of knocking away twenty feet or so of solid
stone facing off a quay or wiping off the end of a wooden wharf.
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