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The crew were in readiness, in the rigging or leaning over the bulwarks, and before another moment had passed both Owen and the stranger were drawn up and stood in safety in the main-chains, whence eager hands hauled them on board.
The two steamers, big and little, were so close that each was compelled to sheer off a bit; then the Captain turned on the bridge and seemed for a moment uncertain what to do with his prisoner. A number of men were leaning over the bulwarks of the British ship, and it would have been quite possible for the person on one boat to give a message to those on the other.
At that the commodore hurried forward, the men falling back to the bulwarks respectfully, and he mounted the fore-rigging as agile as any topman, followed by his aide with a glass. From the masthead he sung out to me to set our stu'nsails, and he remained aloft till near seven bells of the watch.
Hoping to lessen the strain on the hull, they cut away the foremast. In falling, it tore away the pipes, and the vessel became a perfect wreck. Numbed with cold, and faint for lack of food, the crew lashed themselves to the bulwarks and rigging; and so, drenched by the icy spray, and chilled through by the wind, they spent another fearful night.
It was not possible that the crime and the escape could go long undetected; the watch might at any moment come the full length of the ship. Gering flashed a glance at him again, his back was to him still, suddenly doffed the hat and cloak, vaulted lightly upon the bulwarks, caught the anchor-chain, slid down it into the water, and struck out softly along the side.
These facts are, however, of more importance in another point of view, as showing us that there are living checks to the growth of coral-reefs, and that the almost universal law of "consumed and be consumed," holds good even with the polypifers forming those massive bulwarks, which are able to withstand the force of the open ocean.
Two-thirds of her men were killed or wounded when Paul Jones gave the signal to board her. The Americans swarmed over the enemy's bulwarks, and, armed with pistol and cutlass, cleared the deck.
"No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil's claws must have left their mouldings there since yesterday," murmured Starbuck to himself, leaning against the bulwarks. "The old man seems to read Belshazzar's awful writing. I have never marked the coin inspectingly. He goes below; let me read.
"My usual luck," growled David Bright, as he came on deck after a hearty breakfast, and sat down on the bulwarks to fill his pipe and do what in him lay to spoil his digestion though, to do David justice, his powers in that line were so strong that he appeared to be invulnerable to tobacco and spirits.
"And the cutter was borne down, every wave pushing her with giant force nearer and nearer to destruction, when the man at the chains shrieked out 'Mark three, and the Lord have mercy on our souls!" and all the crew, when they heard this, cried out 'Lord, save us, or we perish. But still they thought that their time was come, for the breaking waves were under their lee, and the yellow waters told them that, in a few minutes, the vessel, and all who were on board, would be shivered in fragments; and some wept and some prayed as they clung to the bulwarks of the unguided vessel, and others in a few minutes thought over their whole life, and waited for death in silence.
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