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"Oh no," I answered; "with the captain and the pilot on the bridge, and all the crew in the forecastle, it can only be a beautiful bit of steering. We shall just shave her." The words were scarcely out of my mouth when smash went our bulwarks like brown paper, and our yardarms crumpled like umbrellas. I had jokingly threatened with the "thirteenth" the day before, but they had laughed at me.
Either the masts would go, or the Elsinore would rise with her masts intact, or she would never rise again. In the meantime she lay dead, her lee yardarms almost touching the sea, the sea creaming solidly to her hatch-combings across the buried, unseen rail. The minutes were as centuries, until the bow paid off and the Elsinore, turned tail before it, righted to an even keel.
We continued to run down the coast without meeting with any adventure till we sighted the large island of Mindanao. We were standing off that island one night, when about midnight the ship was struck by a heavy squall. She lay over till her yardarms almost dipped in the ocean.
The work the pirates were engaged in went on for some time, till even they had tolerably satiated their eagerness for booty; and then I fully expected to see them either heave my shipmates overboard as food for the sharks alongside, or hang them at the yardarms, and then set the ship on fire, as Mark Anthony insinuated, for my satisfaction, that they would do.
The corvette now stood in to action, running so close to her large antagonist that their respective yardarms almost touched, most of the shot from the French frigate's upper deck going harmlessly over her, though she suffered considerably from those of the main-deck. Her rigging, however, escaping much damage, she was able to haul her wind and come about.
Banners of silk streamed from the masthead and from the yardarms, and a most beautiful standard fluttered from a tall staff on the lypting. The midships tent, which shielded the rowers from the glare of the strong light, was striped with red and blue.
All upper sails have their sheets running through sheave-holes in the yardarms next below, then through quarter-blocks underneath these yards and beside the masts, and then down to the deck. Braces are the ropes which swing the yards to the proper angle. Halliards are those which hoist or lower both the yards and sails.
Plutarch tells a strange story of a flock of ravens that settled on the yardarms of his ship while he was on board, and on the windows of the villa in which he passed the night. One bird, he says, flew upon his couch and pecked at the cloak in which he had wrapped himself.
Then closing a little signal book he always carried, he continued to those around him, "Now, gentlemen, no more book, no more signals. I look to you to do the duty of the Queen Charlotte in engaging the flag-ship. I don't want the ships to be bilge to bilge, but if you can lock the yardarms, so much the better; the battle will be the quicker decided."
From time to time, between the hulls one could see a patch of sea, like a great sheet of cloth spattered with oil, while in the entanglement of yardarms a host of seagulls made pretty splashes of white against the blue sky.
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