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The men stood at their guns, waiting eagerly for the moment that the order to fire should be given, laughing, however, and cracking their usual jokes. The officers went their rounds, to see that all necessary preparations had been made. Dick was seated on his ammunition tub on the maindeck, when Lord Reginald and Voules, who had each a certain number of guns to look after, passed him.
Fast alongside a wharf, littered like any ship in port with a tangle of unrelated things, invaded by unrelated shore people, I had hardly seen her yet properly. Now, as she lay cleared for sea, the stretch of her maindeck seemed to me very fine under the stars. Very fine, very roomy for her size, and very inviting.
The Turks stood the assault for a short time, and were completely overpowered. About twenty were killed on the spot, many jumped overboard, and the rest flew to the maindeck, whither they were pursued and driven to the hold. After entire possession had been gained of the ship, and every thing prepared to set fire to her, a number of launches were seen rowing about the harbor.
The Wolf, however, did not, in consequence of the accident, slacken her fire, and she and her opponent were gradually sheering closer together, when the latter was seen to put her helm hard a-starboard, so as to lay the Wolf on board. The order was now received from the captain to load the maindeck guns with double shot and the carronades with grape.
There she lay with her clear black bends, and bright white streaks and long tier of cannon on the maindeck, and the carronades on the quarterdeck and forecastle grinning through the ports in the black bulwarks, while the white hammocks, carefully covered by the hammock cloths, crowned the defences of the gallant frigate fore and aft, as she delved through the green surge, one minute rolling and rising on the curling white crest of a mountainous sea, amidst a hissing snowstorm of spray, with her bright copper glancing from stem to stem, and her scanty white canvass swelling aloft, and twenty feet of her keel forward occasionally hove into the air clean out of the water, as if she had been a sea bird rushing to take wing, and the next, sinking entirely out of sight, hull, masts, and rigging, behind an intervening sea, that rose in hoarse thunder between us, threatening to overwhelm both us and her.
From the maindeck there came the sound of running feet, and the voices of the watch, shouting. Then I caught the Skipper's voice; he must have run out on deck, through the Saloon doorway. "Get some more lamps! Get some more lamps!" he was singing out. Then he swore. He sung out something further. I caught the last two words. "...carried away," they sounded like.
He endeavoured to keep himself cool and composed, and to execute the orders he received. Jack and Tom were employed as powder-monkeys on the maindeck, when Rayner was sent by the captain to ascertain what was going on. As he went along it he passed his two friends. Jack was as active as ever, handing up the powder required; poor Tom looked the picture of misery.
On the 23rd of May 1755 the Tasker sailed out of the Mersey with a full cargo of pressed men designed for Spithead. She possessed no press-room, and as the men for that reason had the run of the hold, all hatches were securely battened down with the exception of the maindeck scuttle, an opening so small as to admit of the passage of but one man at a time.
Fancy a sky like a pale February sky in London, no sun to be seen, and a heat coming, one can't tell from whence. To-day, the sun is vertical and invisible, the sea glassy and heaving. I have been ill again, and obliged to lie still yesterday and the day before in the captain's cabin; to-day in my own, as we have the ports open, and the maindeck is cooler than the upper.
It was hot, standing at the wheel; for there was scarcely any wind, and I was feeling drowsy. The Second Mate was down on the maindeck with the men, seeing about some job he wanted done; so that I was on the poop alone.
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