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We had let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the first puff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed off the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashed himself to it for safety. "Our boat was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water.
"Insh' Allah!" was the laconic answer "If God will." A tense silence fell between them again as the ship drew nearer so that now with each forward heave of her they caught a glint of the white belly under her black hull. Sakr-el-Bahr shaded his eyes, and concentrated his vision upon the square ensign flying from, her mainmast.
His next shot swept along our deck, smashing half a dozen men most horribly, and tied itself round the foot of the mainmast, wounding it badly. And then I saw for the first time that most hideous missile which the Americans had introduced, but which other nations declined to use, as barbarous and uncivilised.
In spite of this Mr Gregory one day ordered him aloft, and the poor fellow managed to get up as high as the mainmast head, when he seemed entirely to lose his nerve, and, letting his legs slip in between the shrouds, he clung there with his hands clutching the ratlines, and holding on for life.
"Yes," he muttered to himself, "she is a liner, undoubtedly; and an X. and Z. boat at that, unless I am greatly mistaken. Two masts the mainmast stepped a long way aft; and two funnels amidships, pretty close together yes; she is an X. and Z.; I'll bet my hat on that. And she is steaming for all she is worth. I can see the `white feather' blowing away from the top of her waste-pipes.
We turned those handles, and had the eyes of idiots. As soon as we had crawled on deck I used to take a round turn with a rope about the men, the pumps, and the mainmast, and we turned, we turned incessantly, with the water to our waists, to our necks, over our heads. It was all one. We had forgotten how it felt to be dry.
The lookout forward also stepped behind the mainmast, where he began to blaze away at the foe. The man aft, by a dash, succeeded in reaching the side of von Ludwig and Jack. Frank, at the wheel, was in a perilous situation, but there he had determined to stay until ordered to shift his position. "Signal the engine room to slow down," said von Ludwig to Jack.
The heart of the officer throbbed almost to suffocation; and his firmness, hitherto supported by the manly energies of his nature, now failed him quite. Heedless of appearances, regardless of being overlooked, he tottered like a drunken man for support against the mainmast.
A rope passed round the windlass, and rove through a block fast to the head of the mainmast, was carried over the side, with a large hook at the end of it. The first thing done was to cut off the head of the whale, which, with the neck-part up, was strongly secured, and floated astern. "That head has got better than a ton of oil in it," observed old Knowles, who was aiding the work.
Yet the moment the bullets whizzed he ran into the hold, and for all his land mettle he was a coward on the sea. When everyone laughed at him and he was becoming a thing of scorn, he asked to be tied to the mainmast, so that he might not be able to escape.
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