The strain came on the windlass, the chain
tautened like a string, vibrated--and the handle of the screw-brake
moved in slight jerks. Singleton stepped forward.
Till then he had been standing meditative and unthinking, reposeful
and hopeless, with a face grim and blank--a sixty-year-old child of
the mysterious sea. The thoughts of all his lifetime could have been
expressed in six words, but the stir of those things that were as much
part of his existence as his beating heart called up a gleam of alert
understanding upon the sternness of his aged face. The flame of the lamp
swayed, and the old man, with knitted and bushy eyebrows, stood over the
brake, watchful and motionless in the wild saraband of dancing shadows.
Then the ship, obedient to the call of her anchor, forged ahead slightly
and eased the strain. The cable relieved, hung down, and after swaying
imperceptibly to and fro dropped with a loud tap on the hard wood
planks. Singleton seized the high lever, and, by a violent throw forward
of his body, wrung out another half-turn from the brake. He recovered
himself, breathed largely, and remained for a while glaring down at the
powerful and compact engine that squatted on the deck at his feet like
some quiet monster--a creature amazing and tame.
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