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Updated: May 2, 2025
I suppose they had all drunk themselves stupid and had upset a light, and the fire had spread and suffocated them all. Anyhow, there were none of them to be seen. I got hold of a water keg and placed it in a boat which luckily hung out on its davits, as Jans had, the day before, been calking a seam in her side just above the water's edge.
It was a moment of great danger, for the bergs encroached on their narrow canal as they advanced, obliging them to brace the yards to clear the impending ice-walls, and they shaved the large berg so closely that the port-quarter boat would have been crushed if it had not been taken from the davits.
We carried four boats at the davits, two on each quarter, and those were all that were available, for the others were buried under the raffle and wreckage of the fallen masts, and it would have taken hours to clear them, with the probability that, when got at, they would have been found smashed to smithereens, while a blind man could have told by the feel of the ship that she was settling fast, and might sink under us at any moment.
Her hull was in sight and she was still becalmed, though her head was pointed in the right direction, and everything was set to catch the coming breeze. She carried a boat on each side at the davits like a man-of-war, and I reported that I could make out men securing them. They had been towing her, and only stopped when they saw us drawing near.
There was a considerable swell, and as the sea lifted the Hornet ahead, the enemy's bowsprit carried away her mizen shrouds, stern davits, and spanker boom, and hung upon her larboard quarter. At this moment an officer called out that they had surrendered. Captain Biddle directed the marines to stop firing and, while asking if they had surrendered, received a wound in the neck.
"I soon rose to the surface, when, swimming up to the almost lifeless body in a few strokes, I caught hold of a portion of the poor fellow's clothing and commenced turning it towards the stern of the vessel just underneath the davits, whence the boat we had been preparing for our flight was suspended all ready for lowering, and with the French sailors standing by above.
And there, in the very midst of the tumbling circle of foaming whiteness left by the vanished waterspout there floated the barque, no longer trim and all ataunto as she had shown a few seconds before, but a dismasted, mangled wreck, with bulwarks gone, boats swept from her davits, all three masts snapped short off at the level of the deck and lying alongside with all attached, a mere tangled mass of wreckage still fast to the hull by the standing and running rigging.
In the middle watch of this night, our two cats have I told you that we brought two cats from England with us? as was their wont, were skylarking and cutting capers on the hammock nettings and davits, when tabby the lesser, instead of jumping on something palpable, made a leap on space with the natural result, for he lighted on water and was rapidly whirled astern by the inky waters of the Tartar gulf.
She was particularly well equipped with boats, too: there were a steam pinnace and a whaler in chocks on the starboard side of the deck- house, balanced by the lifeboat and cutter on the other; and she carried no less than four fine, wholesome boats at her davits aft, all nicely covered over with canvas, to protect them from the sun and also, in one case, to screen from too curious eyes Jack's submarine, which was snugly stowed away in the largest quarter boat, that craft having had her thwarts removed to make room for the submarine.
Then I saw her answer the helm and they staggered off, passing out of the beam of our search-light, so that it seemed to me I had said good-by to Helena forever. We who remained had no davits to aid us, and must launch by hand. For a moment I stood and made my plans. First, I called to Willy, our deck-hand, who had the dingey now astern, some fashion. "Are you ready?"
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