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But the water had rushed in too rapidly for the flames to spread; nevertheless, the water was not able to do its work, for the wood cargo kept the brig afloat. She was water-logged but still floating. "The masts and shrouds were all cut away. The vessel was now little better than a raft, and was drifting at the mercy of the ocean currents. For my part I did not much care.
It was his first attempt, and as his feet began to make acquaintance with the ratlines he awoke for the first time to the fact that though they looked just like a ladder to climb it was a very different matter. They gave and the shrouds felt loose and seemed to sway; the height above looked terrific, and the distance below to the deck quite startling.
Then, all at once, the towering mainmast of the enemy cracked and tottered and swung this way and that on its loosened shrouds. The first intense silence of the battle followed, in the midst of which came a cry from our top: "Their captain is hauling down, sir!" The sound which broke from our men could scarce be called a cheer.
"Don't you remember leading me down once to admire the lady on her stern? like a water-witch just gilded in the rays of some sunrise she had come up to see, you said." "Yes; and we used to climb her shrouds, we boys, and get through the lubber-hole, before we could spell her name out. She's made of heart of oak: she'll float still when the Frarnie is nothing but sawdust.
Of course, the little coaster-captain hopped into the shrouds and squeaked a hail: 'Ship ahoy! What ship is that, and whence and whither? In a deep and thunderous bass came the answer back, through a speaking trumpet: The Begum of Bengal, a hundred and twenty-three days out from Canton homeward bound!
The mad seas, unable to hurl her onward, broke against her sides with indescribable fury, and poured tons of water on the deck; so that no one could remain on it. Having foreseen this, Bax had prepared for it. He had warned all on board to keep close by the main shrouds, and take to the mast when the schooner should strike.
She wrings a linen sheet out in a cauldron of hot water and shrouds me in it and then more and more blanket windings envelop me until I am like the mummy of some Egyptian giantess.
His crew yelled as it rose: the Britons, instead of quailing, cheered with fierce derision: the pirate's wild crew of yellow Malays, black chinless Papuans, and bronzed Portuguese, served their side guns, 12-pounders, well and with ferocious cries; the white Britons, drunk with battle now, naked to the waist, grimed with powder, and spotted like leopards with blood, their own and their mates', replied with loud undaunted cheers, and deadly hail of grape from the quarterdeck; while the master gunner and his mates loading with a rapidity the mixed races opposed could not rival, hulled the schooner well between wind and water, and then fired chain shot at her masts, as ordered, and began to play the mischief with her shrouds and rigging.
Surely this great government can afford better shrouds than that for its soldier dead." Watts lays down the paper and wipes his spectacles, and finally he says: "And Neal wrote that?" "And Neal wrote that," replies the general. "And was born and bred in the Ridge," complains McHurdie. "Born and bred in the Ridge," responds the general.
From the ivy of the church the little birds come chaffering and twittering among the shrouds, and the pigeon will perch upon a spar, so that the sea-gull, the far-searcher, must wonder as he passes on a slant of silent leathers at its daring thus to utilise the device of the outermost seas and the most vehement storms.
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