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Updated: June 1, 2025
The darkness, which was getting to be very intense, was now the greatest and most immediate source of his apprehensions. Could he only get a glimpse of the sea a cable's-length ahead, he would have felt vast relief; but even that small favour was denied him.
The gaité de coeur with which this black exerted himself in the midst of that scene of strife, clamour and bloodshed, has always presented itself to my mind as truly wonderful. Captain Rowley did not alter his course, or fire a gun, in answer to the salute he received, though the two ships were scarcely a cable's-length asunder when the Frenchman began.
It was at first doubtful if this would be the case, but when the two vessels were within about a cable's-length of each other a somewhat stronger puff came up, dying away again just as the Flying Cloud was slowly passing under the barque's stern. Some of my people thought they heard some sort of a commotion in your direction." "Yes," answered the skipper from the barque.
It was like steering into the jaws of death. The two bergs were by this time within a bare cable's-length of the Flying Fish's conical stem; and as they swept irresistibly onward, their pinnacled summits towering five hundred feet into the air, their rugged sides rasping horribly along the edges of the floe with an awful crushing, grinding sound, and their contiguous sides approaching each other more and more nearly every moment, there was not a man on either of those two vessels who did not hold his breath and stand fascinated in awestricken suspense, gazing upon those menacing walls of ice and waiting for the shock which should be the herald of their destruction.
Down in the bay all that could be seen of the great ship, standing now within a cable's-length of the fort, were her topmasts thrusting above a cloud of smoke in which she was enveloped. From the cliffs a flight of startled seabirds had risen to circle in the blue, giving tongue to their alarm, the plaintive curlew noisiest of all.
Thus additionally impelled, the lively craft dashed ahead, and was soon in her allotted berth, or half a cable's-length astern of the Black Prince, as I afterwards heard was the name of the commanding English ship, on this occasion. I may as well add here, that the French Commodore's ship was named La Désirée, and her consort Le Cerf. Mons.
At the end of that period, he found himself quite a cable's-length to windward of the line. But in relating this last particular, events have been a little anticipated.
When she had arrived within about half a cable's-length of us she suddenly ran out of the breeze that had helped her so well, and instantly floated upright, with all her square canvas aback in the draught caused by her own speed through the stagnant atmosphere; and now we were afforded a fresh opportunity to gauge the strength of her crew, for no sooner did this happen than all her sheets and halyards were let go, and the whole of her canvas was clewed up and hauled down together, man-o'-war fashion.
But two difficulties were found between the points that it was so desirable to bring in communication with each other. One of these difficulties consisted in a passage between two lines of reef, that ran nearly parallel for a quarter of a mile, and which were only half a cable's-length asunder.
A couple of minutes later she was near enough for us to be able to make her out as a full-rigged ship of some seven hundred tons; and presently she swept grandly across our bows, at a distance of about a cable's-length, and, putting her helm down, came to the wind, with her main-topsail to the mast, finally coming to rest within biscuit-toss of us to windward.
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