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Zounds! we shall be smashed to atoms if you don't mind your hands, you lubbers main topsail sheets let fly there she pays off, and has headway once more, that's it right your helm now never mind his spanker boom, the forestay will stand it there up with the helm, sir we have cleared him hurrah!"
It was necessary that he keep low, for he was not sure whether there was one of the crew on watch aft. To any one looking through the cabin from the companionway Trask would be visible against the lantern hanging from a forestay if he walked erect in crossing the cabin.
'We're all square now, aren't we? I ended. 'I'll go below and light the stove. Davies had been engaged in fixing up the riding-light. When I last saw him he was still so engaged, but motionless, the lantern under his left arm. and his right hand grasping the forestay and the half-knotted lanyard; his eyes staring fixedly down the river, a strange look in his face, half exultant, half perplexed.
"It is awful, Jack; I would give all I have in the world if I had not persuaded them to go on board. Keep her off a little more, Watkins." The Seabird passed within a cable's length of the breakers at the northern end of the reef. "Now, lads, take your places at the sheets, ready to haul or let go as I give the word." So saying, Tom Virtue took his place in the bow, holding on by the forestay.
Nothing daunted, however, he boldly entered the port, and was passing up to an anchorage, when, without any provocation, he was fired into by the corvette, the commodore's vessel, and the forestay of the Charybdis was shot away.
Harvey Barth alone was spared, and he rested on the flat rock in the ravine till his wasted breath and meagre strength were regained. Then he continued his weary ascent till he reached the summit of the cliffs, where he saw the boat made fast to the wreck, and the mate and passenger clinging to the forestay.
We had a lantern with a bright light hanging from the forestay, to show our position to any passing steamer which might otherwise have run us down. This was the only danger to be apprehended, for no sailing vessel could have come near us, and at the distance we were from the land there was no risk of being drifted on the rocks. Uncle Tom hailed us, and we went on board the Dolphin to supper.
But on her bulwarks at the bow and on the heel of the bowsprit was gathered a group that well deserves notice, for there, foremost of all, and towering above the others, stood Antonio Zeppa, holding on to a forestay, and gazing with intensity and fixedness at the speck of land which had just been sighted.
The cart was forced up the slope two men at the wheels, the others straining ahead the gun lifted out and set, Polhemus ramming the charge home, Captain Holt sighting the piece; there came a belching sound, a flash of dull light, and a solid shot carrying a line rose in the air, made a curve like a flying rocket, and fell athwart the wreck between her forestay and jib.
The jib was run in by the traveller and got down, the foresail had been cast off and had run down the forestay the moment she struck, and the three now set to work to lower the mainsail. "She is dragging," Tom said, examining the lead-line, "but not fast." "Give her another five or six fathoms of chain," Ben said, himself attending to the veering out of the hawser.
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