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Updated: May 24, 2025
"How did you discover that the ship was adrift? Did you feel her cables parting?" demanded the skipper. "No," answered Purchase; "we never felt anything of that kind; but I suddenly noticed that she was falling off and canting broadside-on to the wind and sea, so I knew at once that something was wrong that in fact we had, in some incomprehensible way, struck adrift.
By three o'clock p.m. we had neared the two vessels sufficiently to bring their hulls into view from the main-royal-yard; they were then lying broadside-on to us with their heads to the eastward, the ship being between us and the brig; but by the aid of our glasses we were able to make out that they had apparently dropped alongside each other, and the skipper gave it as his decided opinion that foul play was going on on the part of one or the other of the two craft.
This part of the process having been successfully accomplished, it was an easy matter to bend a spring on to the cable and heave the ship round broadside-on to the sea once more, in which position she afforded an excellent lee under the shelter of which to launch our boats, which, but for this contrivance, must have inevitably been swamped.
"And I am just now beginning to understand what a narrow squeak I had yesterday. For that fellow is exactly like the thing I killed yesterday, though, now that I see him broadside-on, the resemblance, whether to a frog or a kangaroo, is not so strong as it was when I was facing him.
Then, with a final sigh the breeze died away altogether, the topsails hung limp and dew-saturated from the yards, the fore topmast staysail sheet drooped amidships, and the Mercury swung broadside-on to the scarcely perceptible swell. Abandoning the now useless wheel, I walked forward to the skylight in which the cabin lamp, turned low, burned dimly and had a look at the barometer.
When end-on to the sea she pitched a little, it is true, but when broadside-on she simply rose and fell with the run of the sea, being as completely free from rolling motion as though she had still been on the stocks.
We sighted the Wasp immediately upon rounding Gallows Point. She was lying quite by herself, down in the most southerly bight of the Hole, and little more than a cable's length from the beach; consequently we had a clear, uninterrupted view of her the moment that we cleared the Point; and she was lying broadside-on to us, with her head pointing to the southward.
The meal over, the oars were eagerly manned; and the men dividing themselves into two gangs, and working in short spells of a quarter of an hour each, the launch was headed straight for the stranger, which having now lost steerage-way had swung broadside-on, and showed herself to be a small brig.
I took the telescope from Pearce's hands and again levelled it at the stranger. She was still lying broadside-on to us, showing us her port side, and her yards were braced sharp up on the starboard tack, as though assuming her to have come in through one of the passages she had had a wind from the westward, while the breeze which had brought us where we were had been from the eastward.
Our engines had already slackened speed; and, the helm being put down, we came up to the wind, to leeward of the ship and not a half cable's length away from her, broadside-on. "Stand by there, forrad," shouted the skipper. "Ship ahoy there! Surrender, or we'll run you aboard."
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