“By their fog-dimmed glow, men worked from three lifeboats in the swells. A cable snaked down to an air-powered rivet gun, which made a tremendous racket in use. The work was charged with tension, because if a watch on Javelin heard that noise and the ship followed it, for most men dawn might never come.A steel cage-like apparatus with a pair of claw-shaped clamps had been riveted in position just at the waterline. Now, moving ponderously and slowly, the men in the boats guided what appeared to ...be a ten-meter-long gray steel beam into the cage. The clamps were shut down upon it and fastened tight with wrenches. A smaller version of the cage-like device was already bolted to the far end of the squared-off log that masqueraded as a steel beam. There was a groove within the cage for a cylindrical object to be inserted and seized by the second pair of clamps.A wooden seat descended between a pair of ropes. Dylan Custis came down with a bucket of yellow paint and a brush. He began to paint upon the bow a pair of female eyes complete with eyelashes, as below him the other men watched and waited.Custis had approached Captain Beauchene in Michael Gallatin’s presence.You know, cap’n, Custis had said, this ship, she doan got much sense.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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