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Our modern sailor in the navy, however, would be hopelessly lost in trying to follow directions like the following: Make ready your cannons, middle culverins, bastard culverins, falcons, sakers, slings, headsticks, murderers, passevolants, bazzils, dogges, crook arquebusses, calivers, and hail shot! 'A sail! 'How bears she? To-windward or lee-ward? Set him by the compass!
But the hand of the captain had the advance; the foresail boom tore apart the last strands of the sheet and crashed to lee-ward; the Farallone leaped up into the wind and righted; and the peak and throat halyards, which had long been let go, began to run at the same instant.
"Then, on a sudden, it appeared not winds, nor waves, nor thunder, but as if the squadroned cavalry of heaven had charged across the seas, and crushed our battered ship beneath their horse-hoofs! We were flung down flat on our beam ends; and the two or three unfurled sails, bursting with the noise of a cannon, were scattered miles away to lee-ward as if they had been paper.
It was a case of necessity that the youngsters should be attacked; but it was a service of no little danger, and of certain destruction to one, who must fall a sacrifice, that the other might be able to secure the youngster before he had time to reload his musket. Two of the most daring flew to the main-rigging, one ascending to windward, and the other to lee-ward.
No time for the horrors! he must be doing. In a moment he was at work with his dirk. The great lug came down with a rattle. Forward under the boom, he cut the sheet of the jib. It fluttered furiously, streaming lee-ward. Then he stumbled aft. The murdered helmsman still lolled in drunken stupor, smiling inscrutably.
On the comb of the ridge stood an immense boulder, and Maliwe spent the rest of the night sitting to lee-ward of this, Sibi, the dog, curled up at his feet, growling at intervals, and every now and then looking in the direction of the hut, which was, like the kraal, out of sight, with cars cocked and nostrils dilated.
"Then, on a sudden, it appeared not winds, nor waves, nor thunder, but as if the squadroned cavalry of heaven had charged across the seas, and crushed our battered ship beneath their horse-hoofs! We were flung down flat on our beam ends; and the two or three unfurled sails, bursting with the noise of a cannon, were scattered miles away to lee-ward as if they had been paper.
A writer of the early seventeenth century has left the following spirited account of a sea-fight: "A sail, how bears she or stands shee, to winde-ward or lee-ward? set him by the Compasse; he stands right ahead, or on the weather-Bowe, or lee-Bowe, let fly your colours if you have a consort, else not.
He waves us to Lee-ward with his drawne Sword, cals amaine for the King of Spaine and springs his loufe. Give him a chase piece with your broadside, and run a good berth ahead of him; Done, done. Yea, yea. Try him once more, as before; Done, Done; Keep your loufe and charge your ordnance again; Is all ready?
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