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Suddenly the chase put down her helm and luffed up on the starboard tack, intending to rake the Wolf, which was now coming up on her weather quarter. "Hard a-starboard!" shouted Captain Moubray, and the Wolf was brought up on the opposite tack, thus avoiding the raking fire, and receiving the enemy's shot on the starboard side. "Well done!" cried the captain. "Now hard a-port!"
I will lead the boarders, myself." "It must be a general thing, Greenly; I rather think we shall all of us have to go aboard of le Foudroyant. Go, give the necessary orders, and when every thing is ready, round in a little on the larboard braces, clap your helm a-port, and give the ship a rank sheer to starboard. This will bring matters to a crisis at once.
That made me feel better, for I was really afraid he had forgotten how useful a gun is out camping; and I was so taken up watching him fit it together that I almost forgot my poling, till he suddenly sung out, for all the world like a regular sailor, "Hard a-port, lad! Mind your course there, or we'll be swamped," and, sure enough, I had to swing her out into the stream, or we'd have run aground.
He started at my words, uttering, as he did so, a sailor's exclamation of surprise. "Shiver my timbers!" was the phrase. "Shiver my timbers! if 'tain't the little marlin-spike as boarded us a-port!" "Him as wanted to go a seelorin?" cried several in a breath. "The same, for sartin'." "Yes," I answered, "it is; I am the same."
"Not lubberly done," muttered Cap in a sort of soliloquy, "not over lubberly, though he should have put his helm a-starboard instead of a-port; for a vessel ought always to come-to with her head off shore, whether she is a league from the land or only a cable's length, since it has a careful look, and looks are something in this world."
"Port! port! hard a-port!" shouted Bax. "Port it is," replied the steersman, with that calm professional sing-song tone peculiar to seamen. At that instant, the schooner struck the sand, passed over the first line of breakers, and rushed onwards to certain destruction. "Bring Lucy on deck," cried Bax.
Just beneath them the propeller rushed with watery thunder. "Yonder she rises!" cried one of the watchers, pointing at two wireless masts that rose like the fins of a racing shark above the green surface of the Sargasso. "Yonder she rises!" repeated a voice amidship, and more faintly still came the repetition from the bridge, "Yonder she rises hard a-port!"
He acted, moreover, in direct contradiction to that ancient and sage rule of the Dutch navigators, who always took in sail at night, put the helm a-port, and turned in; by which precaution they had a good night's rest, were sure of knowing where they were the next morning, and stood but little chance of running down a continent in the dark.
At the proper moment the line was cut, the helm was put a-port, the lugger's head sheered to starboard, and just as Vito Viti, who witnessed all without comprehending more than half that passed, was shouting his vivas and animating all near him with his cries, the lugger glided past the end of the harbor, on its outside, however, instead of entering it.
Forthwith she quickened; she drove ahead for the stern of the ship she was being conned to clear; her prow was aimed at it, like a descending sword. "Hard a-port!" roared the pilot, jumping back to bellow to the wheel. "Spin her round, sheer over with her!"
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