The full breaker had jerked loose from its
lashings and lay awash under the bowman's thwart: worse--it had
loosed the other two, and these, floating light, had washed away
overboard and gone out of ken.
"Grimalson stood up, slightly dazed. In the rock of the boat he
seemed to be shifting his weight deliberately from foot to foot.
"'Why didn't one of you report?' he shouted, in a fury at which I
smiled; it being so senseless and at the same time so cunning, as a
ruse to let him arise with dignity from the thwart. 'Why didn't
somebody report?' he repeated in an absurd official manner, quite as
though he had been a station-master interrogating a group of porters
on the whereabouts of a missing parcel.
"'Well, sir,' I answered as politely as possible; 'it was I that
first found the casks were loose, and by the accident that the rim of
the full one struck me pretty sharply, in the night, between the
shoulder-blades. I got it trigged up, as you see, before it ran
amuck to do further damage. In securing it I found that it had lost
its bung and was almost empty: but that hardly seemed worth
mentioning, with such a flood of rainwater washing around.
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