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At half-past two, she anchored by the stern, just half a cable's length from the Mole-head, and was lashed by a hawser to the mainmast of an Algerine brig, which lay at the entrance of the harbour. Her starboard broadside flanked all the batteries from the Mole-head to the Light-house.
Her foremast and bowsprit were immensely strong and heavy, and her mainmast was so long and tapering, that the wonder was, how the few shrouds and stays about it could support it: it was the handsomest stick we had ever seen. Her upper spars were on the same scale, tapering away through topmast, topgallant mast, royal and skysail masts, until they fined away into slender wands.
A few minutes after the mainmast the hull went also; but in the nebulous moonlight nothing could be seen of any bodies alive or dead, nothing except wreckage tossing upon the surge. The watchers on the cliff turned away from the wind to gather new breath and give their cheeks a rest from the stinging fragments of rock and earth.
Mainmast, who was better known by that sobriquet than by the name which Christian had given to her on his wedding-day at Otaheite, was a very comely and naturally amiable creature, graceful in form, and although a so-called savage, possessing an air of simple dignity and refinement which might almost be termed lady-like.
But this was little cared for by the intoxicated seamen, who, as soon as they were afloat, again raised their shouts and songs of revelry as they were borne away by the wind and sea towards the beach. Philip, who held on by the stump of the mainmast, watched them with an anxious eye, now perceiving them borne aloft on the foaming surf, now disappearing in the trough.
It seemed to him just as though three weeks on shore had demoralized the ship's company. Though he was now aware that the runaways had done what they could to make trouble, the confusion seemed to be too extensive to be accounted for by their agency. Two of the best boys on board had been sent to the mainmast for disobedience; and it was clear that the runaways had not produced all the trouble.
As he laid us athwart-hawse, or as we swung by him, our jib-boom ran into his mizzen-rigging. They say Jones himself then fastened our boom to his mainmast. Somebody did, but it did not hold, but one of our anchors hooked his quarter, and so we fought, fastened together, to the end, both now fighting our starboard batteries, and being fixed stern to stem.
This accident did not improve his temper, and he was on the point of asking the captain to send a boat to pick up his lost tile, when the full force of the squall began to be expended upon the vessel. He found himself unable to stand up; and he reeled to the mainmast, where Professor Stoute was already moored to the fife-rail. "Wouldn't you like the boat now, Mr.
He was mistaken: the smoke cleared, and there was the pirate captain leaning wounded against the mainmast with a Yankee bullet in his shoulder, and his crew uttering yells of dismay and vengeance.
During this period of equipment occurred a characteristic incident which has only recently become public through a descendant. "On the day the Inflexible was launched, Pellew on the top of the sheers was trying to get in the mainmast. The machinery not being of the best gave way, and down came mainmast, Pellew, and all, into the lake.
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