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For Mr Murgatroyd was "carrying on" and driving the ship quite as much as was consistent with prudence; the wind, it is true, had moderated slightly from its boisterous character of the previous day, and was now steady; but it was still blowing strong, and had hauled round a point or two until it was square abeam; yet, although the lower yards were braced well forward, the ship was under all three royals, and fore and main-topgallant and topmast studding-sails, with a lower studding-sail upon the foremast!
She was all alone with her thoughts, Frank Harness being away forwards attending to the cutting out of a new main-topgallant sail to replace the one they had lost in the storm, the one they were now using being old and unable to stand any further rough usage. "You are not ashamed of the old Nancy, now, eh?"
We had to lay to for the other vessels, and after they had joined us Captain Brown hailed us, to say that the look-out from his main-topgallant mast-head had seen a large ship coming out of the harbour under all sail, and that he thought it possible she might be the Mignonne. As, however, a mist had soon afterwards arisen, she was concealed from sight.
So far as I could perceive, the hull is as sound and tight as ever it was, and, by the way she floats, I do not believe she has very much water in her; and with regard to her spars, her fore and main-topgallant masts are snapped off short by the caps, which appears to be about all the damage done in that direction. Now, why should you not right her, pump her out, man her, and send her into port?
We had kept up so hot a fire on the first ship which had attacked us, that we had at length knocked away her main-topgallant mast and had done considerable damage to her rigging. To our great satisfaction we saw her sheer off and drop astern. "Hurrah! there's one done for," cried Dick Hagger.
The Constitution must have been a picture to stir the heart and kindle the imagination, her black hull heeling to the pressure of the tall canvas, the long rows of guns frowning from the open ports, while her bunting rippled a glorious defiance, with a commodore's pennant at the mainmast-head, the Stars and Stripes streaming from the mizzen peak and main-topgallant mast, and a Union Jack at the fore.
The crew now made the best of their way down on deck, the head-yards were squared, and an effort was made to clear away the wreck, two of the men volunteering for, and succeeding in, the dangerous task of going aloft to cut away the fore and main-topgallant rigging. George now had time to look about him a little, and observe the state of affairs prevailing outside his own ship.
"Look there, Harry," observed Roger, pointing to the main-topgallant yard; and, looking up, Harry perceived two lambent globes of greenish fire. As he continued looking and wondering what they might be, other weird lights made their appearance on the yard-arms and on the very tops of the masts, presenting a beautiful, but at the same time a very eerie, spectacle.
One of the yards being hoisted up to its place across the main-topgallant mast of the Burgh Castle lying in the East India Docks, and still in the hands of the riggers, had slipped from the slings, through carelessness, and come down from high, up aloft to strike the deck wich one end, and then fall flat within a foot of where two lads dressed as midshipmen in the merchant service had been standing, but who at the first shout had rushed in different directions, one to stumble over a coil of rope, perform an evolution like the leap of a frog, and come down flat on his front; the other to butt his head right into the chest of a big, burly, sunburnt man, who gave vent to a sound between a bellow and a roar.
When the Dover weighed, the admiral's upper sail was not visible from her tops, though the Warspite's hull had not yet disappeared from her deck. She left the fleet, or the portions of it that still remained at anchor, with her fore-course set, and hauled by the wind, under double-reefed top-sails, a single reef in her main-sail, and with her main-topgallant sail set over its proper sail.
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