So to begin:—
“Be-low!”
“Hi! you sirs!”
“Look out! Run!”
Quite a little chorus of warnings, and then—
Spang.
And directly after—
Crash.
One of the yards being hoisted up to its place across the main-topgallant mast of the Burgh Castle lying in the East India Docks, and still in the hands of the riggers, had slipped from the slings, through carelessness, and come down from high, up aloft to strike the deck wich one end, and then fall flat within a foot of where two lads dressed as midshipmen in the merchant service had been standing, but who at the first shout had rushed in different directions, one to stumble over a coil of rope, perform an evolution like the leap of a frog, and come down flat on his front; the other to butt his head right into the chest of a big, burly, sunburnt man, who gave vent to a sound between a bellow and a roar.
“Where are— Hi! aloft there!—oh, my wind! Ahoy there, you—!”