"Then, stand by—Let go the anchor," and clink, clink, old Chips knocks out the pin, and away goes the spare anchor and greased chain into a five mile deep of God's sea. As I said, they were in the Indian Ocean.
Well—there was the devil, making a grab here and a grab there, and the slushy chain just slipping through his claws, and at whiles a bight of chain would spring clear and rap him in the eye.
So at last the cable was nearly clean gone, and the devil ran to the last big link (which was seized to the heel of the foremast), and he put both his arms through it, and hung on to it like grim death.
But the chain gave such a Yank when it came-to, that the big link carried away, and oh, roll and go, out it went through the hawsehole, in a shower of bright sparks, carrying the devil with it. There is no devil now. The devil's dead.
As for the old man, he looked over the bows watching the bubbles burst, but the devil never rose. Then he went to the fo'c's'le scuttle and banged thereon with a hand-spike.
"Rouse out, there, the port watch!" he called, "an' get my dinghy inboard."
[275]
