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"I say, Harry," cried one, "was it you that lost your bowsprit this mornin'?" "No, it was the Swab," said Harry, "but we lost our net and all the gear last night." "That was unfort'nit," remarked a friend in a tone of sympathy, which attracted the attention of some of those who stood near.
The chief purpose of this stem is to furnish a point of support for the ropes securing the bowsprit. Of these, the most important is called the gammoning, which consists of a strong and well-stretched hawser, passed up and down successively, in perpendicular turns, over the bowsprit and through a hole horizontally cut in the stem.
She was fearfully close, but appeared to be at the moment sheering away from us. She looked long enough for a three-masted vessel, but one mast only was standing, evidently the mainmast. The corposant appeared to have attached itself to the stump of her foremast, which had been carried away about fifteen or twenty feet from the deck, and I thought her bowsprit seemed also to be missing.
However, we got the top-gallant-sails down, with most of the stay-sails, and the mizen-topsail aback; but finding we still outsailed him, I had no other method left but that of sheering across his hawse, first on one bow, then on the other, raking him as we crossed, always having in view the retarding his way, by obliging him either to receive us athwart his bowsprit, in which case we should have turned his head off shore, or to sheer as we did.
Accordingly, I kept the ship's bowsprit pointing steadily to the eastward, despite the violent remonstrances which Wilde addressed to the boatswain and the carpenter he had never spoken to me since I had ordered him off the poop and turned him out of the cabin.
This horrid trophy was tied at the end of a sloop's bowsprit, to be displayed for the gratification of all honest sailormen who might behold it in port. It was not a gentle age on blue water and Captain Edward Teach had been the death of many helpless people during his wicked career.
One thing I will wager, though I am not a betting man, and that is, that the next time we meet the Phantom we shall beat her, by as much as we should have done today, but for this accident." The appearance of the Osprey as she sailed into the anchorage, without topmast or bowsprit, excited great attention; and many of the yachtsmen came on board to inquire how the disaster had happened.
To-day was our last day at Copenhagen, and the crew seemed determined to make it the gayest. At early dawn, floating from the mast head to the bowsprit end, then down again to the boom-end, even to the water; and from the cross-trees along both back-stays, every flag and pennant on board the yacht might have been seen.
The old chains rattled out, and a little red cloud of rust rose up on either side of the bowsprit. The men, accustomed to obey, worked rapidly without thinking why, and the brig soon rode pretty quietly at her two anchors. But now, after the work was finished, no one could conceal his astonishment at this sudden anchoring, just off the coast, among islets and skerries.
An awful sickening shudder ran through him, a fear too great to be resisted. There rose from his heart a despairing prayer; and the unbeliever has sounded the depth of agony when he calls upon God. At that instant a beam loosened from the upper deck, dragged downward by the ropes of the falling bowsprit, fell with a crash, dashing him downward into the gulf below.
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