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Updated: May 1, 2025
At this moment it was secured to the cathead, and before the brute could get free it was hoisted on deck. I now darted forward, and seizing a rope which hung over the side hauled myself up. As I saw the monster floundering on deck, I was thankful that he had not caught me in his jaws. "You have had a narrow escape, my laddie," observed Mr McTavish.
The press of canvass she was carrying laid her over, until her copper sheathing, clear as glass, and glancing like gold, was seen high above the water, throughout her whole length, above which rose her glossy jet black bends, surmounted by a milk white streak, broken at regular intervals into eleven goodly ports, from which the British cannon, ugly customers at the best, were grinning, tompion out, open mouthed at us; and above all, the clean, well stowed white hammocks filled the nettings, from tafferel to cathead oh! that I had been in one of them, snug on the berth deck!
Mr Capstan only ordered the men to hook on the tackle by which the head of the anchor was to be braced up; and, before he could say "Jack Robinson," if he had been that way inclined, the falls were manned and the anchor run up to the cathead with a rousing chorus as the men scampered aft with the tail-end of the rope.
Far behind, until the horizon closed upon the ocean, our wake was curiously remindful of the boulevard of a great city seen through a mist, the lights fading in the dim distance, but sparkling still. I went forward and stood by the cathead. The blue water stirred by the bow was wonderfully bright, a mass of coruscating phosphorescence that lighted the prow like a lamp.
An anchor, for instance, would be hanging to the rail of the topgallant forecastle, or the cathead, and, as the caique came dropping down with the current, if they drifted her under the bow, the stopper and shankpainter was let go simultaneously, and the anchor landed on their heads and then through the bottom of the boat. Nothing more was ever seen of that batch!
It fell true as a bullet, across the wreck. As it dropped, a sea almost swept it clear; but the lead hitched in a tangle of cordage by the port cathead; within twenty seconds the rope was caught and made fast below. All was now easy. At a nod from Jim young Zeb passed down a second line, which was lowered along the first by a noose.
In the face of so decided an opinion as this there was of course nothing further to be said, and five minutes later the Europa was leaping and plunging madly through the short, choppy Channel seas, with her topmasts and topgallant-masts whipping like fishing rods under the strain of the increased canvas, while the whole of her fore-deck was deluged with the spray that came in over the weather cathead, in cataracts that leapt almost as high as the foreyard.
Here a stage was erected on either side, over the cathead, with steps to ascend to it; a tail block was attached to the boom-iron, at the outer extremity of each foreyard-arm, and through this a rope was rove, one end of which came down to the stage; the other was led along the yard into the catharpings, and thence down upon the main deck.
Again the helm was put up and the men ran to the braces, but the water-laden ship, already well down by the head, and more sluggish than ever, had fallen off only one point when the whale leaped upon her with demoniac energy, and so it appeared to the seamen rammed her with maleficent passion. This time he struck the ship just under the weather cathead.
I have so great a confidence in myself, that I would really take the command of the Channel fleet to-morrow if it were offered to me as Earl Russell proposed to do, when he was simple "Lord John;" and, as a civilian First Lord of the Admirality has since done, although he possessed so little nautical knowledge that he might not have been able to tell you the difference between a cathead and a capstan bar, or, how to distinguish a "dinghy" from the "second cutter."
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