"One, and two, and three, and… away!" the Bosun cried as the deep-sea lead, the heavy 25-pound hollow-bottomed cone, was "armed" with tallow, at last, swung out, and dropped into the sea with a loud splash, and the two-cable line went thrumming out through the main-yard block, the sheave keening, and the long flakes of the line laid out atop the starboard gangway twitching back and forth, one end to the other.

"Watch yer fackin' feet, boys," an Irish sailor cautioned, "or Davy Jones'll swig yer rum ration 'is fair mairnin'!"

Whip-whip-whip went the flakes, racing in pursuit of the plummet as it dove for the stygian depths. One hundred fathoms of it gone, already, the ten-fathom sets of knots passing in a blur, and the Bosun and his Mate, Mr. Towpenny, already looking towards the "bitter end" on the light, horizontal barrel-winch to assure themselves that it would not go overboard. Yet…!

The whip-whipping slowed, one last flake lazily shortening from bow-to-stern on the gangway, then stood upright to the block, its long-stored kinks no longer being stretched out, then the out-board length kinking; then, went limp and still, feeding out mere inches more with each slow roll or toss of the ship's hull!

"A hun'erd an' twenty… hun'erd an' twenty-five, an' a quarter less, t'this line!" one of the freezing hands hung in the hawse-breeches shrilled, able to count the dozen spaced knots just below the water, and the single halfway knot bobbing just above the mean surge. "Soundin's! In-Soundin's, at a hun'erd an' twenty-five fathom!"

The cheer that that news elicited could have split the heavens, nearly equalled the volume of a well-controlled, simultaneous broadside from the starboard-side guns, or shivered the main course!