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I concluded to take a boat, and procured of Frank Stanley a little row-boat, with a spritsail for running before the wind; for I intended to choose my own time for crossing. We set out from C. early one morning, and arrived in the afternoon after a very pleasant passage, and we enjoyed our visit to that section very much.
A third bullet struck the water, glanced, passed singing over our heads, and struck the water again beyond. "I guess we'd better get out of this," Charley remarked coolly. "What do you think, lad?" I thought so, too, and said we didn't want the line anyway. Whereupon we cast off and hoisted the spritsail.
Part of the fore-topsail was wrapped like a shawl round the lee cat-head, while the rest hung down in festoons from the collar of the fore-stay to the spritsail yard-arm.
Lay to till 4, and then began the chase again, they having got almost out of sight. Thursday, 6th. Still in chase of the 5 vessels. Set our spritsail, topsail & squaresail, with a fair breeze of wind. One of the ships brought to and fired a gun to wait for a sloop that was in Comp' with her, & to wait for us. We took in all our small sails, bore down on her, & hoisted our pennant.
I now perfectly understood that he had been caught and spritsail yarded, as the seamen term it, and then turned adrift for their diversion. The buoyancy of the spar prevents the animal from sinking down under the water, and this punishment of their dreaded enemy is a very favourite amusement of sailors.
Crossing the bay under spritsail and jib, with a slashing breeze from the south-west, we ran swiftly into the mouth of the Avacha River, and landed at the village to refresh ourselves for the fifteenth time with "fifteen drops," and take leave of our American friends, Pierce, Hunter, and Fronefield.
"Spritsail and rigging!" interrupted the Buccaneer, whose enraged spirit sought some outlet, "No conventicle lingo here you forget your company, Sir Willmott. What of the Jew?" "You know his highness has strangely favoured this man, and that he is much thought of.
In this time I had run a distance of about six hundred and fifty miles to the east, and with no other cloths upon the schooner than her spritsail. On the morning of the seventh day I came on deck, having slept since four o'clock.
We snapped off three flying-jib booms in twenty-four hours, as fast as they could be fitted and rigged out; sprung the spritsail yard; and made nothing of studding-sail booms. Beside the natural desire to get home, we had another reason for urging the ship on. The scurvy had begun to show itself on board.
A sturdy attempt to get her under control with the spritsail was made; but this resource, a bare possibility to a dismasted ship in a fleet action, with friends around, was only the assertion of a sound never-give-up tradition, against hopeless odds, in a naval duel with a full-sparred antagonist.
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