United States or Jersey ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Captain Drake sent his brother and Ellis Hickson to examine the river Chagres; and on their return Captain Drake, with his two ships and three pinnaces, sailed for Carthagena, where he arrived on the 13th day of August. While on the voyage thither he captured two Spanish ships, each of 240 tons, with rich cargoes, neither of them striking so much as a blow in resistance.
They, therefore, sailed her back, and left her at the Cabezas, "manned with English and French, in the charge of Richard Doble," with strict orders not to venture out until the return of the pinnaces. Putting her complement into the pinnaces, they again set sail for the mouth of the Francisco River. They crossed the bar without difficulty, and rowed their boats upstream.
Mac jumped on his fire-step, and, looking down the trench, saw beyond it sure enough the poor old Triumph with a heavy list towards him. Some of the fellows had seen the torpedo strike her right amidships, and a great column of water rise high in the air and fall on her decks. From all directions destroyers, mine-sweepers and pinnaces were concentrating on the doomed vessel.
When the division of the crews was made, it was decided that James Rause should remain in command of the four ships at Pheasant Bay; and that Captain Drake, with fifty-three of his own men and twenty of Rause's, should start in the three pinnaces and the shallop for Nombre de Dios. The first point at which they stopped was the Isle of Pines, on the 22nd July.
And, therefore, he advised the Governor "to hold open his eyes, for before he departed, if God lent him life and leave, he meant to reap some of their harvest, which they got out of the earth, and send into Spain to trouble all the earth." Drake showed him the "true cause" of his unwilling retreat to the pinnaces.
The pinnaces, his four and the two from the Space Scourge, had gone spiraling out a hundred miles beyond the city; the Space Scourge had gone into a tighter circle twenty miles from its center; the Nemesis had continued her relentless descent until she was ten miles from the ground, before she began spewing out landing craft, and combat cars, and the little egg-shaped one-man air-cavalry mounts.
This, though the company at first marvelled at; yet presently it was put in execution and performed that night. Our Captain had his desire, and men enough for his pinnaces.
In a few hours afterwards they sent out two frigates well manned, which Drake soon forced to retire, and, having sunk one of his prizes, and burnt the other in their sight, leaped afterwards ashore, single, in defiance of their troops, which hovered at a distance in the woods and on the hills, without ever venturing to approach within reach of the shot from the pinnaces.
All day long the pinnaces, cutters, gigs, steam launches shoved and bumped against the stone steps, marines came ashore for the mail, stewards for fruit and fish, Red Cross nurses to shop, tiny midshipmen to visit the movies, and the sailors and officers of the Russian, French, British, Italian, and Greek war-ships to stretch their legs in the park of the Tour Blanche, or to cramp them under a café table.
He said he wanted from his Majesty four large vessels, two hundred tons each, six pinnaces well provided with artillery, and five hundred Flemings to work them. I said at once and earnestly, that such a demand was out of all reason, before he, on his part, had achieved something in his Majesty's service. I remonstrated fully and largely, although, to avoid being tedious, I omit the details.
Word Of The Day