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Into its radiance the revenue cutter was gliding, outlined against the leafy shade of Cosmos Island, her flag standing out like a board in the fresh breeze, her cutwater churning up a mass of foam. She made a beautiful picture, one that fascinated me for the moment, and caused me to forget my own immediate incidents.
The early risers were standing on the prow of the steamer where the cutwater sent constantly into the air a nodding plume of white spray. Suddenly the watch shouted, "Whale ahead, sir!" Officers and sailors were astir. Just ahead, and lying in the pathway of the steamer lay a whale, fifty feet in length, seemingly asleep, for he was motionless.
They clambered down and up the ladders, over the windlass and anchor-chains which a native was busily painting. A school of porpoise were frolicking under the cutwater. Plop! plop! they went; and sometimes one would turn sidewise and look up roguishly with his twinkling seal-like eyes. Plop! plop! Finally all save one sank gracefully out of sight.
CRASH! the Indiaman's cutwater in thick smoke beat in the schooner's broadside: down went her masts to leeward like fishing-rods whipping the water; there was a horrible shrieking yell; wild forms heaped off on the Agra, and were hacked to pieces almost ere they reached the deck a surge, a chasm in the, sea, filled with an instant rush of engulphing waves, a long, awful, grating, grinding noise, never to be forgotten in this world, all along under the ship's keel and the fearful majestic monster passed on over the blank she had made, with a pale crew standing silent and awestruck on her deck; a cluster of wild heads and staring eyeballs bobbing like corks in her foaming wake, sole relic of the blotted-out Destroyer: and a wounded man staggering on the gangway, with hands uplifted and staring eyes.
Two seconds would have cleared him. By the rules of the road at sea the Blackbird had the right of way. If MacRae had held by the book this speeding mass of mahogany and brass and steel would have cut him in two amidships. As it was, her high bow, the stem shod with a cast bronze cutwater edged like a knife, struck him on the port quarter, sheared through guard, planking, cabin.
He said no more, but it seemed probable that he meant cut off his commander's head; and he then rolled forward to help the carpenter, and the whole strength of the crew, whom the first rays of a dull grey morning found still at work hauling in the tangle of spar and rope; and soon after, a stay having been secured to the wreck of the cutwater, a staysail was hoisted, and the cutter pretty well answered her helm.
As it was, the softly moving paddles and the sharp cutwater of the canoe made no noise whatever. The instant that Van der Kemp, from his position in the bow, observed the camp, he dipped his paddle deep, and noiselessly backed water. There was no need to give any signal to his servant.
Gaff's spring at the chains of the cutwater was successful, but in making it he received a blow on the head from one of the swinging blocks of the sloop which almost stunned him, insomuch that he could only cling to the chain he had caught with the tenacity of despair.
At the top of the cutwater, and at the feet of the Virgin, a kneeling angel, with folded wings, leaned her back against the stem, and looked through a spyglass at the horizon. The angel was gilded like Our Lady. In the cutwater were holes and openings to let the waves pass through, which afforded an opportunity for gilding and arabesques.
This Ayrton resolved to learn at any cost, and as an hour after his arrival the vociferations had begun to die away, and as a large number of the convicts were already buried in a drunken sleep, Ayrton did not hesitate to venture onto the Speedy's deck, which the extinguished lanterns now left in total darkness. He hoisted himself onto the cutwater, and by the bowsprit arrived at the forecastle.
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