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First came the men-o'-war, sweeping majestically past the Tahiti and out to sea. Then, in single-line-ahead, followed the transports in grand procession past the Tahiti's bows, whose troops stood on the topmost perches to miss nothing of the glorious review. Everywhere to the upperworks of each passing vessel clung the Australians.
Rushing in from that watery world was a gray shape narrow, low-decked, with slight upperworks and a single stack. "A chaser!" cried Torry, finding his voice and growing excited. "She's aiming right this way," added Frenchy excitedly. Phil Morgan had his glass out again, and his lips unpuckered and the tune he had been monotoning died. "What do you make of her, Phil?" whispered Al Torrance.
Around and around she went, and each time she finished a lap the circle had narrowed. The spectators on the revenue cutter were highly interested. They climbed upon the upperworks and cheered and yelled in their excitement. At last a shell from the destroyer dropped fairly upon the deck of the U-boat, just abaft the conning tower. The submarine rocked, dipped, and seemed about to sink.
It was followed by a return to Panama, a secret trip several miles up the coast to look over a freighter placidly anchored there, a dolorous-appearing coast-tramp with unpainted upperworks and a rusty red hull. The side-plates of this red hull, Blake observed, were as pitted and scarred as the face of an Egyptian obelisk.
Up the hill Richmond town was burning briskly; outside the town of Richmond there was no trace of the Black Smoke. Then suddenly, as we approached Kew, came a number of people running, and the upperworks of a Martian fighting-machine loomed in sight over the housetops, not a hundred yards away from us.
The deck, the upperworks, the interior woodwork and the rigging might be finished afterwards, but the essential point was that the colonists should have an assured refuge away from the island.
Instead of praying for plenty of sea room, he now hoped with all his heart that the vessel had been set in toward the coast. She was sinking under his feet and would not live through the day. It was useless to toil at the pumps or to strive at mending the shattered upperworks. The men turned to the task of quitting the ship, and of saving the souls on board.
A few ships bore traces in blackened paintwork, shell-torn funnels and splintered upperworks, of the ordeal by battle through which they had passed; but their numbers, as they filed in past the shag-haunted cliffs and frowning headlands, were the same as when they swept out in an earlier gloaming to the making of History.
At the same time, far away in the southeast the masts and upperworks of three ironclads rose one after the other out of the sea, beneath clouds of black smoke. But my brother's attention speedily reverted to the distant firing in the south. He fancied he saw a column of smoke rising out of the distant grey haze.
They were informed that an Englishman, named Foster, an officer in the Portuguese service, who had been of great use to them, was imprisoned for his kind attentions. On 9th December they met with bad weather and lost their foretop-gallant mast, but the rough handling they got was credited with improving the sailing qualities of the ship, as it took some of the stiffness out of her upperworks.
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