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"No bottom yet, sir," reported the stroke-oar at frequent intervals; and at each report the coxswain starboarded an extra half-point or so, until at length the boat's nose was pointing straight for the mouth of the creek, and at every stroke of the oars the fiendish uproar of horns, tom-toms, and shouting or chanting, whichever it was seemed to come to our ears more distinctly, and with more ominous import.
Sail is shortened; one after another the great ungainly sheets of canvas are clewed up or lowered down on deck; one after another the three helms are starboarded, and the three ships brought up to the wind.
Once fairly inside the Head, the helm was starboarded and the ship was headed for a sort of bay in the southern extremity of the basin, the topsail halyards were let go, the jib hauled down, and the spanker brailed in, and with the way that she still had on her the Mercury slowly drifted to the spot which I had chosen as her final berth, and the anchor was let go, in three and a half fathoms of water.
Sail is shortened; one after another the great ungainly sheets of canvas are clewed up or lowered down on deck; one after another the three helms are starboarded, and the three ships brought up to the wind.
"It sounds fair sailing; but I liken it to going blindly into a trap," retorted the captain. "Haul on the main-sheet! Steady, forward, with the jib!" And the pilot starboarded his helm. Again the captain shivered. Who was this, who held death so lightly? His own gloomy forebodings came upon him with redoubled force. What manner of pilot was this, to whom night was as day?
The next business was to attend to the safety of both vessels, which were now perilously near the reefs ahead. Half a dozen men were sent on board the brigantine to assist those already there in working her, when the grapplings were cast off, the brigantine starboarded her helm while we ported ours, and the two ships separated, to haul up on opposite tacks.
'So I was! 'How was the bride dressed? In rowing costume? Mortimer looks gloomy, and declines to answer. 'I hope she steered herself, skiffed herself, paddled herself, larboarded and starboarded herself, or whatever the technical term may be, to the ceremony? proceeds the playful Tippins. 'However she got to it, she graced it, says Mortimer.
But the attempt evidently did not appeal to Vitgeft, for the Tsarevich suddenly starboarded her helm and led away from us in a north-westerly direction, while Togo, perhaps afraid that this was the preliminary to a retreat on the part of the Russian fleet, feigned a nervousness that he certainly did not feel, and shifted his helm, heading South-South-West, at the same time forming his battleships in line abreast.
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