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As the three passengers had been exempted from the toil, they volunteered to look out for the safety of the boats until midnight, in order that the men might obtain as much rest as possible; and half an hour after the crew were lost in the deep slumber of seamen, Captain Truck and these gentlemen were seated in the launch, holding a dialogue on the events of the day.
Shalmaneser called upon his new friends to furnish him with a fleet, and they readily responded to the call, placing their ships at his disposal to the number of sixty, and supplying him further with eight hundred skilled oarsmen, not a sufficient number to dispense with Assyrian aid, but enough to furnish a nucleus of able seamen for each vessel. The attack was then made.
But the last resolution is still more incomprehensible to those who know not exactly the basis on which it was raised. The number of ships of war in actual commission amounted to two hundred and fifty, having on board fifty thousand seamen and marines.
A good SEAMAN is able to make all the various knots, splices, and other arrangements in hempen or wire rope, without which a ship cannot be rigged; he can make a sail, send up or down yards and masts, and do many other things, the sum total of which need several years of steady application to learn, although a good seaman is ever learning. Such seamen are fast becoming extinct.
The tents were allowed to stand until after nightfall, and no signs were made in the British camp that the troops were about to move. Soon after dark, however, the tents were struck and the troops being paraded without sound of bugle, moved silently forward. Among them were the seamen and marines landed from the Empress and Orion.
But he poured out his questions with such rapidity, and he was so overcome, that we followed him in silence as he walked beneath the awnings of the upper decks, and showed us women still talking hysterically, men unnerved and witless as children, seamen yet finding curses for the atrocity that had been.
The two poor seamen on board the ship were ruthlessly slaughtered by the women in a similarly treacherous manner, their bodies brought on shore, thrown down into the well with those of their shipmates and the renegade, and the whole depression filled with sand and coral slabs, till it was level with the surrounding soil.
The crew swarm aloft; the soldiers, under proper guidance, are stationed at the halliards, and the tacks and sheets. The cable is slipped, single-reefed topsails, courses, topgallant sails, jibs, and driver set. Few among even the brave seamen who do not hold their breath and offer up a silent prayer that the ship may cast the right way. Hurra! round she comes. The sails fill.
The Capture of Acre, the greatest deed of modern times. I have had a little experience in services of this nature, and I think it my duty to warn your lordships on this occasion, that you must not always expect that ships, however well commanded, or however gallant their seamen may be, are capable of commonly engaging successfully with stone walls.
The last in the list included the crews of 'ships and vessels bound to foreign parts which are laden and cleared outwards by the proper officers of H.M. Customs. It would seem that there was next to no one left liable to impressment; and it is not astonishing that the Admiralty, as shown by its action very shortly afterwards, felt that pressing seamen was a poor way of manning the fleet.
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