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Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two barrels of sperm; above which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw slender breakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truck was a brazen lamp.
The next shot from the schooner, however, was an exceedingly lucky one; it appeared to strike the frigate's fore-topmast about six feet below the cross-trees, and the next moment the whole of the wreck was hanging by the topsail- sheets from the fore-yard down on to the ship's forecastle, with her jibs and fore-topmast-staysail towing under her bows.
Bill, rig yer winch a couple o' yards this way an' stake her down. Keep ten men wid ye an' the rest o' ye can follow me. But not too close, mind ye! Fetch yer axes along, an' every man o' ye a line." Three minutes later, the skipper was sliding down the foremast, with Nick Leary close above him, another man already on the cross-trees and yet another in mid-air on the hawser.
"We will keep on as we are going until she bears dead ahead, and then we will edge away after her." Presently eight bells struck, and Hoskins came up to relieve me, whereupon I made another journey aloft, to the fore-topmast cross-trees this time.
A little farther, and there the vessel lies before us, quietly at anchor, with her sails all furled. "Again we see the men upon the deck, faintly, but still we see them. "Again we shout. "We see a man halting by the bulwarks; something glitters in his hand. Is it a spyglass? "No; he moves away. "Is that a man mounting to the mizen cross-trees? "Yes, it is a man.
I therefore slung the glass over my shoulder and made my way aloft as far as the main cross-trees, from which a full view of her was to be obtained. But before so much as taking a single look at her through the telescope, her behaviour assured me that she must be either a ship of war, or a craft of decidedly suspicious character.
As I stood thus, my gaze was arrested by the appearance of a small object in rapid motion across the bosom of the lagoon inside the reef, and a scrutiny of a few seconds was sufficient to satisfy me that it was a canoe. Seating myself upon the cross-trees, that I might more conveniently use the glass which I had taken aloft with me, I quickly focussed the instrument and brought it to bear.
Then, as I swung myself off the yard, I heard the lieutenant give the order to bear up in chase, to rig out the port studding-sail booms, and to see all clear for setting the port studding-sails or stu'n'sails, as they are more commonly called. I had reached the cross-trees, on my way down, when Captain Bentinck again hailed me.
Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two barrels of sperm; above which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw slender breakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truck was a brazen lamp.
Had they been British, they would have answered the flag flying at the peak of the yacht. "Steamer coming down from the nor'ard, sir!" suddenly sang out a man whom Tremayne had just stationed in the fore cross-trees to look out for the air-ship that was now so anxiously expected.
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