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On seeing this, the Portuguese squadron, finding further chase unavailing, gave us a broadside which did no damage, and resumed its position in the van of the convoy, to which we immediately gave chase as before, and as soon as night set in, dashed in amongst them, firing right and left till the nearest ships brought to, when they were boarded the topmasts cut away the rigging disabled the arms thrown overboard and the officers compelled to give their parole not to serve against Brazil until regularly exchanged an event not likely to happen.
Back they pulled, and were on board the Gannet once more, within five minutes after they had left her side, not a man having been hurt, and the work so thoroughly accomplished that the corvette was in a furious blaze fore and aft, the flames already licking the heels of her topmasts in their upward ascent.
True, the wind itself tore our canvas out of the gaskets, jerked out our topmasts, and made a raffle of our running-gear, but still we would have come through nicely had we not been square in front of the advancing storm-centre. That was what fixed us.
'The captain says it is from icebergs, said the latter, drawing up the collar of his greatcoat about his ears, as they walked the deck. 'I wish we saw one at a safe distance, of course. But this fog is so blinding' Even as he spoke, a vast whitish berg loomed abeam, immensely higher than the topmasts, in towers and spires snow-crested.
Yeo hailed me from above, and up the lively rope ladder I went. She had a Norwegian name, but that was not her name. All Poplar knew her once. There she was born. She was one of ours. That stone arch of John Company, the entrance to the East India Dock, once framed her picture, and her topmasts looked down to the Dock Road, when she was at home. I could believe Galsworthy.
Moored with the stream anchor to the Northward. Unbent the sails and struck yards and topmasts. The ships very much crowded with Indians and surrounded by a multitude of canoes. I have nowhere in this sea seen such a number of people assembled at one place, besides those in the canoes, all the shore of the bay was covered with people and hundreds were swimming about the ships like shoals of fish.
John above the settlements for the whole course of the river, at least twenty-five miles on each side, will be the most advantageous reserve to the Crown of lands within this province, especially as the river is navigable for boats and rafting of masts the whole course of it, as also for rafting of masts in the several branches of it; and in this tract is contained a black spruce, fit for yards and topmasts, and other timber fit for ship-building."
"She's a barque," I heard Mr. Sweers say. "I see that," said the captain. "She's got a pretty strong list," continued the mate, talking with the glass at his eye; "her topgallantmasts are struck, but her topmasts are standing."
In the bay lay an 80-gun ship, but without her topmasts, so that the only way of assisting the privateer was to send a reinforcement of men, which might easily have reached her before the xebeques, but the commander of the ship of war, alleging that so small a vessel could not escape, declined to do so.
Among other bellicose incidents that varied the dull monotony of my life, was the beating off a frigate equal in force to our own; though I believe that we were a little obliged to her for taking leave of us in a manner so abrupt, though we could not certainly complain of the want, on her part, of any attention for the short and busy hour that she stayed with us, for she assisted us to shift all our topmasts, and as, before she met us, we had nothing but old sails to display, she considerably decorated us with a profusion of ribands gaily fluttering about our lower masts and the topmasts that were still standing gracefully hanging over our sides.
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