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Breakfast was over, and I had just set the watch to work upon certain jobs requiring the doing, when a boy, whom I had sent aloft to grease down the topmasts, as a punishment for some trifling misdemeanour, reported two sail, close together, broad on our starboard beam, and steering the same way as ourselves.
I haven't now, for that matter. But it seemed a right-sounding sort of name for a place that was to have a bay that was to hold a French frigate that was to be cut out; so, as I said, we sailed for San Salvador, and made the bay about eight bells that evening, and saw the topmasts of the frigate over the headland that sheltered her. And forthwith there was summoned a Council of War.
As the day wore on we received a temporary addition to our company, in the shape of a brig. She hove in sight in the eastern quarter, about six bells in the forenoon watch; and the first sight that we got of her revealed that her jib-boom and both her topmasts were gone.
The rest of the vessels in the harbour, with few exceptions, had not hitherto been prepared to meet any unusual tempest but lay as if their crews were totally regardless of any signs of a change. A few, however, had followed our example by striking their topmasts and getting out fresh anchors.
Beyond the piles of lumber Bobby could make out the topmasts of more ships, from which floated the pointed hollow "tell-tales" affected by the lake schooners of those days as pennants. At the end of the lumber piles the road turned sharp to the right.
She was a large, clumsy ship, and, with her topmasts stayed forward, and high poop-deck, looked like an old woman with a crippled back. It was now the close of Lent, and on Good Friday she had all her yards a'-cock-bill, which is customary among Catholic vessels. Some also have an effigy of Judas, which the crew amuse themselves with keel-hauling and hanging by the neck from the yard-arms.
The tall ship sank, laden and sparkling to the topmasts with salt like Arctic snows; but the mad mill was still grinding at the ocean bottom, where all the men lay drowned. For the fairy tales knew what the modern mystics don't that one should not let loose either the supernatural or the natural.
One of their sixty-fours, the Ajax, had lost her main and mizzen topmasts in a violent squall on the previous afternoon, and was not in the line. There were therefore eleven ships on each side. The action, known as that of Negapatam, began shortly before 11, when both fleets were on the starboard tack, heading south-south-east, wind south-west.
She was a large craft, apparently of about eight hundred tons measurement; her three topmasts were carried away close off by the caps; the wreckage was all lying inboard, cumbering up her decks; her courses and staysails were blown to ribbons; and she was steering so badly that it was difficult to say where she was going, except that her general direction was to leeward.
Very early in the morning the wide-awake crews of the South Carolina vessels, which were now afloat and at anchor, saw that the topmasts of the pirate craft were beginning to move above the distant headland, and very soon Bonnet's ship came out into view, under full sail, and as she veered around they saw that she was coming toward them.
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