injury, disaster, death: waiting tensely, despairingly, for a reply to a letter: waiting fearfully for a battle to begin: waiting for a ship to sail: waiting for a guest to arrive or to go: waiting sleeplessly through the watches of the night for the day that seems determined not to come: waiting, all a-sweat, for the cessation of pain, or for the doctor who may relieve it: waiting apprehensively for a storm to strike or, when it has struck, to abate. Never, I thought, as I waited for that sloop to returnas all of us waited, torn by our fears, our nerves a-janglewould I wittingly add to man's burdens by keeping anyone waiting.
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With that sloop in the offing, waiting became a poison, so that voices all around us broke, arms and legs jerked uncontrollably, minds and thinking were disarranged. Some laughed like women: fell into black depressions, trembled, cursed, groaned, stammered, yawned cavernously.
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Captain Dean, once more calm and composed, carved our meat and passed around the seaweedand after an eternity the little sloop slipped in to coast back and forth across the southern tip of the island. With each pass she drew closer. We could see she carried no boat; only a bark canoe lashed alongside her cabin.
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The behavior of the three men who sailed her filled me with anxiety. They eyed us warily: glanced at each other, as if in doubt. They didn't like what they saw, and I couldn't blame them.
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''You've got six feet at flood tide," Captain Dean shouted. "Fifteen feet offshore you've got six feet."
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The sloop's master waved his hand, brought the sloop into the wind, dropped his jib and spilled the anchor over
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