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The moanings grew louder and more weird, sounding now on the port-quarter, now on the starboard bow, then broad abeam, and anon high over our mastheads; it was clear that small, partial currents of air were in violent motion all round us, and that the crisis was at hand. The Pirate Slaver by Harry Collingwood
Deserted Pepworth's was on the port-bow, Gun Hill, under Lombard's Kop, on the starboard, Bulwan abeam, Middle Hill astern, Surprise Hill on the port-quarter. Every outline was cut in adamant. The Helpmakaar Ridge, with its little black ants a-crawl on their hill, was crushed flat beneath us.
"There! did you see that, sir? There is a craft of some sort away out there," pointing in a north-easterly direction. "I saw her as distinctly as possible. She is about six miles away, and is stripped to her close-reefed topsails " "Did you see that ship out there on our port-quarter, sir?" hailed one of the men from the forecastle, interrupting Master Freddy in his tale.
But we ain't by no means certain about it; that there whirl-pool away off on our port-quarter a little ways down-stream is makin' such a row that perhaps we're mistaken, and have took the splash of the water in it for the sound of paddles. And it's so dark that there ain't a thing to be seen." It was as the man had said.
Meanwhile the Cairo, having got rather too close in shore, backed out towards the middle of the stream, when two explosions occurred in quick succession, one close to the port-quarter, the other under the port-bow. The effect was tremendous. Some of the heavy guns were actually lifted from the deck.
"I shall do nothing with him. Sampson is in charge of him, and I am sure he will not take his eye off the major while he remains on board." The port-quarter boat was lowered into the water, and a couple of the old sailors took their places in her.
The seals, their round, dark heads bobbing above the water at a distance of perhaps three hundred yards from her port-quarter, gazed at the spectacle with childlike interest. They saw a group of men eying them from the deck of the swift monster. All at once from this group spurted two thin jets of flame.
When we got out into the warm air of a July evening, we found that the quay, which before dinner had been alongside the ship, was floating away from our port-quarter. Clearer thinking showed us that it was the ship which was veering round, and not the shore. We were really moving. The Rangoon was off for the Dardanelles.
I seemed to discover all sorts of secret charms that I had never seen in things I had seen a hundred times. The watch on deck were busy with brooms and buckets; a sailor, coiling a rope over a pin, paused in his work to point over the port-quarter, with a massive fore-arm like a billet of red mahogany. I looked about, rubbing my eyes.
Half-an-hour sufficed for us to secure our capture and put a prize-crew on board under Gowland's command, and we then parted company; the brig to stand on for an hour as she was going so as not to needlessly alarm the barque and then to haul up and shape a course for Sierra Leone, while we at once hauled our wind in pursuit of our new quarry, which bore by this time well upon our port-quarter as we had hitherto been going with her topsails just showing above the horizon.
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