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The ship ran so fast that she had got into latitude thirty-two by ten A.M. next morning. At 10h. 15m. the dreary monotony of this cruise was broken by the man at the mast-head. "On deck there!" "Hullo!" "The schooner on our weather-bow!" "Well, what of her?" "She has luffed." "Well, what o' that?" "She has altered her course." "How many points?" "She was sailing S.E., and now her head is N.E."
But the worst of it was that, when last discerned, the Frenchman was broad on our weather-bow, and the Englishman gallantly leading his van. The breeze blew fresher and fresher; but, with even our main-royal set, we dashed along through a cream-coloured ocean of illuminated foam.
I think the fellow's head is made of a wood-pack: for my shot rebounded from his face like a wad of spun-yarn from the walls of a ship. But if so be that son of a b of a tree hadn't come athwart my weather-bow, d'ye see, I'll be d d if I hadn't snapt his main-yard in the slings, and mayhap let out his bulge-water into the bargain."
Though constantly on the look-out, not a vessel could we see, from whence we might get provisions. At length, one morning, as Jack Stretcher had gone aloft "A sail on the weather-bow!" he sung out, in a cheery tone, which gave hope to all our hearts. "She's standing across our course, so we can speak her without altering it." In about two hours we were up to her.
He smiled as he saw the pistol which one of the warrant officers held constantly at his head, as if he considered the precaution a very unnecessary one. "Nobody desires to see the Research safe inside Tiger harbour more eagerly than I do," he observed. "Should the ship strike on a reef, it will not be my fault." "A sail on the weather-bow!" shouted the look-out from aloft.
The skipper nodded and slackened out the sheet a bit as the wind came more astern. He kept his eyes fixed ahead of him, and the men kept gazing through the gloom. "There is the perch," one of them shouted presently, "just on her weather-bow!" The skipper nodded and held on the same course until abreast of the perch, which was only a forked stick. The men came aft and hauled in the mizzen sheet.
"Very true, very true; if, indeed, there is any chance of that we will hold on. What is this off here, a little on our weather-bow? It looks like a low headland." "The garrison, by Jove!" exclaimed the other, whose trained eye sooner recognized the military outlines than the less instructed senses of his connection. The Sergeant was not mistaken.
There was a very awkward jump of a sea on already, and it was fast increasing; but the light beamy little craft, although she tossed the spray in blinding showers from her weather-bow right aft and out over her lee quarter, never shipped a drop of green water, and I was highly delighted at her excellent sea-going qualities.
The captain, who stood upon the weather hammock-rails, holding by the main-rigging, ordered the helm a-midships, looked full at the sails, and then at the cable, which grew broad upon the weather-bow, and held the ship from nearing the shore. At last he cried, "Cut away the cable!"
The Frenchman did attempt a fire with his main-deck gun; but, at the first plunge of the ship, a sea slapped up against her weather-bow, and sent a column of water through the port, that drove half its crew into the lee-scuppers. In the midst of this waterspout, the gun exploded, the loggerhead having been applied an instant before, giving a sort of chaotic wildness to the scene in-board.
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