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The tides were now getting successively higher and higher every day, and on the 11th the Palmetto floated for the first time in almost three weeks. As soon as her keel cleared the bar she was swung around into the channel, head to sea, and moored with light kedge-anchors, ready for a start on the following day.
Presently, the Resolution's people carried out two kedge-anchors, with hawsers to each; and these found ground a little without the bower.
The wind for once proved favourable, and at 2 P.M. on the 12th of October the Palmetto shook out her long-furled courses and topsails, cut the cables of her kedge-anchors, and with a light breeze from the north-east, moved slowly out into the gulf. Never was music more sweet to my ears than the hearty "Yo heave ho!" of her negro crew as they sheeted home the topgallant sails outside the bar!
The Success had now remained fifty hours as a fair mark for the enemy to fire at, during which they lost both their bower-anchors and cables, with the stern and kedge-anchors, four hawsers, four lower-deck guns, nineteen barrels of powder, two men killed and six wounded; and had they not now got off, it was believed they must have been sunk before morning.
After this the hemp portion of the tow-rope was secured to bollards on the quarter-decks of both craft, the slack of the hawsers attached to the kedge-anchors was taken up, the skippers stood by their respective engine-room telegraphs, and, at a signal from Wong-lih, the San-chau went slowly ahead until the towing hawser was taut.
"She moves! she moves!" he shouted, waving his cap in his excitement; and then, like a vessel gradually sliding off the stocks when being launched, the Chih' Yuen gathered way, and a few moments later she slid bodily off the rock with a plunge that caused the San-chau to roll as though in a heavy sea, overrunning her kedge-anchors before her momentum could be checked.
As soon as a strain was put upon the lines, however, we found that the ice to which they were attached came home upon us, instead of the ships being drawn out to the southward; and we were therefore obliged to have recourse to the kedge-anchors, which we could scarcely find room to drop on account of the closeness of the ice.
The sea had gone down during the night until, when the first streaks of daylight came stealing up out of the east, it was almost as calm as on the previous afternoon before the storm. Frobisher was one of the first among the officers to turn out and go up on deck, and he occupied the time until breakfast very pleasantly in watching the cruiser's boats running out kedge-anchors.
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