The snow stopped, the wind dropped, the tent was warm, and we must have slept like logs; for when I woke, we were sitting up, all ten of us, wild-eyed, hair on end. I was vaguely conscious, in the recesses of my mind, that a gun had been fired: that I was still hearing its echo.
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The tide was almost dead low: the sea had fallen: the wind was a light breeze, offshore, so that the tops of the swells had a slick lookand rising and falling on those rollers was a craft so sturdy, so smart, so daring in the way she slipped around those brown ledge-fingers, almost touching them, that I couldn't shout, or even speak. All I could do was stand there, empty of thought, devoid of sensation, barely alive.
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The little vessel was odd-looking. She had a high sharp bow and an even higher sharp stern, and under her boom rested a broad, high-sided skiff with a narrow, flat bottom. There were five men on her deck, one lying out on the short bowsprit watching for ledges, one at her tiller, one reloading the musket that had aroused us, and two wrestling the skiff over the side.
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