For ten seconds the spectators could not believe their eyes. They
had distinctly seen the SPRITE caught between a resistless wall of
water and the pier; where she should have been crushed like the
proverbial egg-shell. Yet there she was--or her ghost.
Then a great cheer rose up against the wind. The crowd went crazy.
Mere acquaintances hugged each other and danced around and around
through the heavy sands. Several women had hysterics. The riverman
next to Mr. Duncan opened his mouth and swore so picturesquely that,
as he afterward told his chum, "I must've been plumb inspired for
the occasion." Yet it never entered Mr. Duncan's ministerial head
to reprove the blasphemy. Orde jumped down from his half-buried log
and clapped his hat on his head. Newmark did not alter his attitude
nor his expression.
The SPRITE was safe. For the few moments before she glided the
length of the long pier to stiller water this fact sufficed.
"I wonder if she got the line aboard," speculated the tug-boat
captain at last.
The crowd surged over to the piers again. Below them rose and fell
the SPRITE. All the fancy scroll-work of her upper works, the
cornice of her deck house, the light rigging of her cabin had
disappeared, leaving raw and splintered wood to mark their
attachments.
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